pernicious

pernicious, baneful, noxious, deleterious, detrimental are comparable when they mean exceedingly harmful but they differ as to the kind and extent of the potential for harm. Something is either pernicious or baneful which is irreparably harmful but pernicious is more often applied to things that harm exceedingly or irreparably by evil or by insidious corrupting or enervating and baneful to those that poison or destroy

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pernicious anemia

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a pernicious influence

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the effects of false and pernicious propaganda cannot be neutralized— Huxley

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pernicious social institutions which stifle the nobler impulses— Parrington

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the baneful notion that there is no such thing as a high, correct standard in intellectual matters— Arnold

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they were under as little personal restraint as was compatible with their protection from the baneful habit of swallowing one another— Bierce

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the full extent and degree of their baneful psychological influence is quite inadequately realized— Moberly

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Something is noxious which is harmful especially to health of body or mind

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a cold noxious wind— Haughton

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only when the educator shall have been educated, the air cleared of noxious fallacies . . . will the reign of Humbug come to an end— Grandgent

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Deleterious is used chiefly of something which causes harm when taken into the body (as into the digestive or respiratory tract) and may suggest obscure or ill-under- stood effects

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many drugs that seem so good in the first trials prove to have deleterious aftereffects— Heiser

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this gas was well known to be deleterious— John Phillips

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Detrimental, like deleterious, generally suggests a much lower degree of harmfulness than the remaining terms; typically it imputes an impairing or hampering quality to the agent or an impaired or hampered condition to the one acted upon

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a federal-scholarship program is a project worthy of our united support, provided it can be administered at the state level, free from political or other detrimental influences— L. M. Chamberlain

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they both ran down the theory as highly detrimental to the best interests of man— Peacock

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bismuth is considered to be a detrimental impurity in refined lead— Pasternack

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although too rich a diet is harmful to calves of both sexes, the detrimental effects are less marked in a bull calf than in a heifer— Farmer's Weekly

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Analogous words: baleful, malign, *sinister, malefic, maleficent: *poisonous, venomous, toxic, pestilent, miasmatic: injurious, hurtful, harmful, mischievous (see corresponding nouns at INJURY)

Antonyms: innocuous