Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Causing or tending to cause injury; harmful.
  • adjective Offensive or insulting; hurtful.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Tending to injure or impair; inflicting harm, wrong, or mischief; of a harmful nature or quality; deleterious; detrimental; hurtful: as, an injurious action or speech; conduct injurious to health or morality.
  • Prone to injure; having disposition or capacity to inflict harm or suffering; hostile; dangerous.
  • Abusive; insulting.
  • Synonyms Damaging, disadvantageous, prejudicial, mischievous, destructive.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective obsolete Not just; wrongful; iniquitous; culpable.
  • adjective Causing injury or harm; hurtful; harmful; detrimental; mischievous

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Causing physical harm or injury; harmful.
  • adjective Causing harm to one's reputation; slanderous, libelous, invidious.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective harmful to living things

Etymologies

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Examples

  • II. iii.40 (50,4) [Oh, injurious love] Her execution was respited on account of her pregnancy, the effects of her love: therefore she calls it _injurious_; not that it brought her to shame, but that it hindered her freeing herself from it.

    Notes to Shakespeare — Volume 01: Comedies Samuel Johnson 1746

  • The result was that the sugar content of the blood of the patient fell to the normal, the passing of sugar into the urine was reduced to a minimum, and the general state of poisoning, acidosis, which is caused by certain injurious substances which are formed in this kind of diabetes mainly through disturbance in the fat metabolism, often in great quantities, was checked.

    Physiology or Medicine 1923 - Presentation Speech 1965

  • If you say another word injurious to my brother's memory, I'll leave this house and let you starve for all I'll do for you.

    The Climbers A Play in Four Acts Clyde Fitch 1887

  • No doctor will ever truthfully tell you he's treated anyone for any long-term injurious effects of marijuana.

    Black Entertainment, Money, Style and Beauty Blogs - Black Voices Madison J. Gray 2010

  • The defendant argued that the jury was improperly instructed on the standard of fault required for commercial disparagement aka injurious falsehood or trade libel, since that tort requires actual malice and the jury was instructed that negligence was sufficient.

    ISO damages for false advertising and commercial disparagement Rebecca Tushnet 2006

  • My distrust of Sabine is as you know chronic, and I went determined to keep careful watch on his address, lest some crafty phrase injurious to Darwin should be introduced.

    The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Huxley, Leonard 1900

  • They cannot, therefore, be classed among the especially beneficial birds, neither can they be termed injurious on account of what they eat.

    A Book of Natural History Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. Various 1891

  • [830] Dr. Johnson, describing her needle-work in one of his letters to Mrs. Thrale, vol.i. p. 326, uses the learned word sutile; which Mrs. Thrale has mistaken, and made the phrase injurious by writing 'futile pictures.'

    Life of Johnson Boswell, James, 1740-1795 1887

  • Caleb was betrayed into no word injurious to Bulstrode beyond the fact which he was forced to admit, that he had given up acting for him within the last week.

    Middlemarch: a study of provincial life (1900) 1871

  • Caleb was betrayed into no word injurious to Bulstrode beyond the fact which he was forced to admit, that he had given up acting for him within the last week.

    Middlemarch 1871

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