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Insidious vs Potential - What's the difference?

insidious | potential |

As adjectives the difference between insidious and potential

is that insidious is producing harm in a stealthy, often gradual, manner while potential is existing in possibility, not in actuality.

As a noun potential is

currently unrealized ability (with the most common adposition being to ).

insidious

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Producing harm in a stealthy, often gradual, manner.
  • * 1847 , George Lippard, The Quaker City: or, The monks of Monk-Hall
  • Strong and vigorous man as he looks, Livingstone has been for years the victim of a secret and insidious disease.
  • * 1997 , Matthew Wood, The book of herbal wisdom: using plants as medicine
  • At some point in time they may become the source of an insidious cancer.
  • * 2007 , Sharon Weinstein, Ada Lawrence Plumer, Principles and practice of intravenous therapy
  • The nurse always must be alert to signs of slow leak or insidious infiltration.
  • Intending to entrap; alluring but harmful.
  • * Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • The insidious whisper of the bad angel.
  • * 1948 , D.V. Chitaley (editor or publisher), All India Reporter , volume 3, page 341:
  • All these facts clearly appear to me now to establish that the sanctioned scheme was a part of a bigger and […] more insidious scheme which was to hoodwink the creditors and to firmly establish and consolidate the position […]
  • * 1969 , Dorothy Brewster, John Angus Burrell, Dead reckonings in fiction
  • The atmosphere of this insidious city comes out to meet him the moment he touches the European shore; for in London he meets Maria Gostrey just over from France.
  • * 2005 , Anita Desai, Voices in the City , page 189:
  • This seemed to her the worst defilement into which this insidious city had cheated her and in her agitation, she nearly ran into the latrine, […]
  • * 2007 , Joseph Epstein, Narcissus Leaves the Pool , page 171:
  • This is the insidious way sports entrap you: you follow a player, which commits you to his team. You begin to acquire scraps of utterly useless information about teammates, managers, owners, trainers, agents, lawyers.
    Hansel and Gretel were lured by the witch’s insidious gingerbread house.
  • (nonstandard) Treacherous.
  • * 1858 , Phineas Camp Headley, The life of the Empress Josephine: first wife of Napoleon
  • But with whom do you contract that alliance? With the natural enemy of France — that insidious house of Austria — which detests our country from feeling, system, and necessity.
  • * 1912 , Ralph Straus, The prison without a wall
  • ‘Believe me,’ he shouted, ‘these insidious folk talk dangerous nonsense. I hear they are spouting out their ridiculous platitudes not five miles from this park in which we are standing…’
    The battle was lost due to the actions of insidious defectors.

    Derived terms

    * insidiously * insidiousness

    References

    * * *

    potential

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • Currently unrealized ability (with the most common adposition being to )
  • Even from a young age it was clear that she had the potential to become a great musician.
  • (physics) The or the gravitoelectric field.Novello, M. ? VII Brazilian School of Cosmology and Gravitation, Rio de Janeiro, August 1993] Atlantica Séguier Frontières, 1994, p. 257 ? "In general, a system can have both translational and rotational accelerations, however. It follows from Einstein's principle of equivalence that locally—i.e., to the extent that spacetime curvature can be neglected—gravitational effects are the same as inertial effects; therefore, gravitation can be approximately described in terms of gravitoelectric and gravitomagnetic fields corresponding to translational and rotational inertia, respectively. This is the gravitational Larmor theorem, which is very useful in the post-Newtonian approximation to general relativity. The gravitomagnetic field of a massive rotating body is a measure of its absolute rotation."''Thorne, Kip S. ? [http://einstein.stanford.edu/content/sci_papers/papers/nz-Thorne_101.pdf#page=3&view=FitV Gravitomagnetism, Jets in Quasars, and the Stanford Gyroscope Experiment] From the book "Near Zero: New Frontiers of Physics" (eds. J. D. Fairbank, B. S. Deaver, Jr., C. W. F. Everitt, P. F. Michelson), W. H. Freeman and Company, New York, 1988, pp. 3, 4 (575, 576) ? ''"From our electrodynamical experience we can infer immediately that any rotating spherical body (e.g., the sun or the earth) will be surrounded by a radial gravitoelectric (Newtonian) field ''g''''' and a dipolar gravitomagnetic field '''''H'' . The gravitoelectric monopole moment is the body's mass M; the gravitomagnetic dipole moment is its spin angular momentum S."''Grøn, Øyvind; Hervik, Sigbjørn ? [http://books.google.com/books?id=IyJhCHAryuUC&pg=PA203&lpg=PA203&dq=%22The+gravitoelectric+field+is+the+Newtonian+part+of+the+gravitational+field,+while+the+gravitomagnetic+field+is+the+non-Newtonian+part.%22&source=bl&ots=vF8KM_toq1&sig=5rqHuClm2mU_RdeMVPP0xPth7bA&hl=en&ei=Pd8DTd-kLMLrOdKx0LsB&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1 Einstein's General Theory of Relativity with Modern Applications in Cosmology Springer, 2007, p. 203 ? ''"In the Newtonian theory there will not be any gravitomagnetic effects; the Newtonian potential is the same irrespective of whether or not the body is rotating. Hence the gravitomagnetic field is a purely relativistic effect. The gravitoelectric field is the Newtonian part of the gravitational field, while the gravitomagnetic field is the non-Newtonian part."
  • (physics) The work (energy) required to move a reference particle from a reference location to a specified location in the presence of a force field, for example to bring a unit positive electric charge from an infinite distance to a specified point against an electric field.
  • (grammar) A verbal construction or form stating something is possible or probable.
  • Adjective

    (-)
  • Existing in possibility, not in actuality.
  • The heroic man,—and is not every man, God be thanked, a potential hero?—has to do so, in all times and circumstances. Carlyle, Thomas ? Chartism ? Chapman & Hall, 1858, p. 229
  • (archaic) Being potent; endowed with energy adequate to a result; efficacious; influential.
  • And hath, in his effect, a voice potential Shakespeare, William ? Othello ? 1603
  • (physics) A potential field is an irrotational (static) field.
  • From Maxwell equations (6.20) it follows that the electric field is potential: E(r) = ?''grad''?(r).'' ''Soviet Physics, Uspekhi v. 40, issues 1–6, American Institute of Physics, 1997, p. 39
  • (physics) A is an irrotational flow.
  • The non-viscous flow of the vacuum should be potential (irrotational). Volovik, Grigory E. ? The Universe in a Helium Droplet Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 60
  • (grammar) Referring to a verbal construction of form stating something is possible or probable.
  • References