“Strong solar storms can be dangerous for astronauts in space, and can cause problems for GPS systems and satellites. ... But solar storms can also have more innocuous [ɪˈnɑkjəwəs] consequences on Earth, such as supercharged displays of the northern lights.” — Denise Chow, NBC News (online), May 15, 2025

innocuous [ɪˈnɑkjəwəs]
adj

Innocuous is rooted in a lack of harm: it comes from the Latin adjective innocuus, which was formed by combining the negative prefix in- with a form of the verb nocēre, meaning “to harm” or “to hurt.” It first appeared in print in the early 1600s...

English