harmful
/ˈhɑːmfʊl
/ /ˈhɑːmf(ə)l/adjective
Causing or likely to cause harm: the ozone layer blocks the harmful rays from the sun sugars which can be harmful to the teeth...
- There are alternative fuels, some less harmful to the atmosphere and some which do no harm at all.
- The Thames has highly dangerous levels of e.coli and other harmful bacteria.
- CFC gas damages the ozone layer which protects the earth from harmful rays from the sun.
Synonyms
damaging, injurious, detrimental, dangerous, deleterious, unfavourable, negative, disadvantageous, unhealthy, unwholesome, hurtful, baleful, wounding, destructive, environmentally unfriendly;
noxious, hazardous, poisonous, toxic, deadly, lethal;
bad, evil, malign, malignant, malevolent, corrupting, subversive, pernicious
rare baneful, maleficent, malefic
Derivatives
harmfully
/ /ˈhɑːmf(ə)li / adverb ...- Even in the worst instances, such as the explosion at a chemical plant in Seveso, Italy in 1976, nobody has ever been exposed to harmfully high doses for prolonged periods.
- Explanations requiring the supernatural are now not merely quaint but harmfully distracting to children and other innocents.
- Although in a modern Western diet salt is plentiful - sometimes harmfully superfluous - its normal concentration in the body fluids is essential to the maintenance of a normal blood volume.
harmfulness
/ /ˈhɑːmf(ə)lnəs / noun ...- In the early 20th century the practice of spirit worship, along with a host of other religious practices, was assailed by urban intellectuals for its purported backwardness, ignorance and harmfulness.
- If some members of a set differ in some important way from the others, usually in terms of their danger or harmfulness, they are put into another group.
- The present study confirmed the harmfulness of bidis in the causation of lung cancer.