Etymologically
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innocuus

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [ɪnˈnɔ.ku.ʊs][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [inˈnɔː.ku.us][1]

Forms

innocuus (feminine innocua, neuter innocuum); first/second-declension adjective[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin in- + nocuus (“harmful”).[2][1][3] The TLL thinks it is formed directly from in- and noceō (“to harm”), hardly from ⟨nocuus⟩.[4] De Vaan traces noceō to Proto-Italic *nokeje- (“to cause death”) and Proto-Indo-European *noḱ-eie- (“to make disappear, cause death”), with a cognate in Sanskrit नाशय- (nāśáya-, “to make disappear, destroy”).[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler dates it from Virgil,[6] who in the Aeneid has the ships all settling unharmed on the shore.[2][7]

Semantic evolution

Lewis & Short call it poetic and post-Augustan.[7] It means harmless: Ovid has fire letting someone pass harmlessly, Virgil a safe shore, and Pliny the Elder a kind of wolf harmless to man and a rain harmless to beans.[2][7] Passively it is unharmed, as Virgil's ships and Claudian's towers through which fire passes.[7] Of people it means blameless: Ovid calls Deucalion and Pyrrha both blameless, both worshippers of the gods.[2] The TLL notes that it has no comparative or superlative and that it is often spelled innocus in Christian inscriptions.[4] Stelten gives "blameless, innocent" for Church Latin.[8]

Timeline

  • 70–19 BC – Virgil of unharmed ships and a safe shore.[2][7][6]
  • 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid of harmless fire and blameless people.[2]
  • 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder of a wolf harmless to man.[7]
  • 1590s – innocuous appears in English.[3]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. Harmless, innocuous; safe.[2][7][1]
  2. Free from guilt, blameless, innocent.[2][7][8][1]
  3. Unharmed, unhurt.[2][7][1]

Word family

  • innocuē

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ a b Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
  5. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  6. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  8. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson