Nocent
/ˈnoʊ.sənt/noun
Causing harm or injury; harmful.
Did you know?Nocent is a real English word, but today it survives mostly as a learned Latin form in legal and scholarly contexts, where its opposite, innocent, became far more common.
Etymological Timeline
Proto-Indo-European
PIE
*nek-
“to kill, harm”
Latin
Latin
nocēre
“to harm, hurt, injure”
Latin
Latin
nocēns
“harming, injurious; guilty”
Middle English
English
nocent
“harmful, injurious”
Modern English
English
nocent
“causing harm or injury”