pernicious

• POS: Adjective
• HYPHEN: per=ni=cious

CIDE DICTIONARY

pernicious, a. [L. pernix, -icis.].

 Quick; swift (to burn).  Milton.  [1913 Webster]

pernicious, a. [L. perniciosus, from pernicies destruction, from pernecare to kill or slay outright; per + necare to kill, slay: cf. F. pernicieux. Cf. Nuisance, Necromancy.].

 Having the quality of injuring or killing; destructive; very mischievous; baleful; malicious; wicked.  [1913 Webster]
"Let this pernicious hour
Stand aye accursed in the calendar."  [1913 Webster]
"Pernicious to his health."  [1913 Webster]

Syn. -- Destructive; ruinous; deadly; noxious; injurious; baneful; deleterious; hurtful; mischievous.

OXFORD DICTIONARY

pernicious, adj. destructive; ruinous; fatal.

Idiom

pernicious anaemia see ANAEMIA.

Derivative

perniciously adv. perniciousness n.

Etymology

L perniciosus f. pernicies ruin f. nex necis death

THESAURUS

pernicious

baleful, baneful, brutal, corroding, corrosive, corrupting, corruptive, counterproductive, damaging, deadly, death-bringing, deathful, deathly, deleterious, destructive, detrimental, devastating, disadvantageous, disserviceable, distressing, fatal, feral, harmful, hurtful, injurious, internecine, killing, lethal, malefic, maleficent, malevolent, malign, malignant, miasmatic, miasmic, mischievous, mortal, noisome, noxious, ominous, pestiferous, pestilent, pestilential, poisonous, prejudicial, ruinous, savage, scatheful, sinister, swart, toxic, venenate, veneniferous, venenous, venomous, vicious, virulent

ROGET THESAURUS

pernicious

Badness

N badness, hurtfulness, virulence, evil doer, bane, plague spot, evil star, ill wind, hoodoo, Jonah, snake in the grass, skeleton in the closet, amari aliquid, thorn in the side, malignity, malevolence, tender mercies, ill-treatment, annoyance, molestation, abuse, oppression, persecution, outrage, misusage, injury, knockout drops, badness, peccancy, abomination, painfulness, pestilence, guilt, depravity, hurtful, harmful, scathful, baneful, baleful, injurious, deleterious, detrimental, noxious, pernicious, mischievous, full of mischief, mischief-making, malefic, malignant, nocuous, noisome, prejudicial, disserviceable, disadvantageous, wide-wasting, unlucky, sinister, obnoxious, untoward, disastrous, oppressive, burdensome, onerous, malign, corrupting &c (corrupt), virulent, venomous, envenomed, corrosive, poisonous, deadly, destructive, inauspicious, bad, ill, arrant, as bad as bad can be, dreadful, horrid, horrible, dire, rank, peccant, foul, fulsome, rotten, rotten at the core, vile, base, villainous, mean, injured, deteriorated, unsatisfactory, exceptionable indifferent, below par, illcontrived, ill-conditioned, wretched, sad, grievous, deplorable, lamentable, pitiful, pitiable, woeful, evil, wrong, depraved, shocking, reprehensible, hateful, hateful as a toad, abominable, detestable, execrable, cursed, accursed, confounded, damned, damnable, infernal, diabolic, unadvisable, unprofitable, incompetent, irremediable, badly, wrong, ill, to one's cost, where the shoe pinches, bad is the best: the worst come to the worst, herba mala presto cresco, wrongs unredressed or insults unavenged.