innocent

Meanings

Adjective

• Free from guilt, sin, or immorality.
• Bearing no legal responsibility for a wrongful act.
• Without wrongful intent; accidental or in good faith.
• Naive; artless.
• Not harmful; innocuous; harmless; benign.
• Lacking (something), or knowledge of it.
• Lawful; permitted.
• Not contraband; not subject to forfeiture.

Noun

• One who is innocent, especially a young child.
• A harmless simple-minded person; an idiot.

Related

Similar words

• sackless, guiltless
• pure, untainted

Opposite words

• guilty, nocent
• perverse

Origin

• From Middle English innocent, from Old French inocent, borrowed from Latin innocens ("harmless, inoffensive"), from in- + nocēns, present participle of noceō. Displaced native Old English unsċyldiġ.