Definitions

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

  • adjective Causing or capable of causing harm; injurious.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Full of harm; hurtful; injurious; noxious; detrimental; mischievous.
  • Synonyms Pernicious, baneful, deleterious, prejudicial.

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

  • adjective Full of harm; injurious; hurtful; mischievous.

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

  • adjective of a kind likely to be damaging; injurious

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

  • adjective causing or capable of causing harm

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From harm +‎ -ful.

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Examples

  • Chinese authorities have in recent months stepped up their already strict control of the flow of information online, including efforts this year to discourage the spread of what they term "harmful information" and "rumors"—words increasingly used for opinions and information not approved by the Communist Party.

    Sina Takes Aim at Online Rumors Loretta Chao 2011

  • Obama, opening the forum, took another shot a Republicans in Congress for what he called a harmful practice of putting party above country.

    chron.com Chronicle 2011

  • Hani Qawasmi, who had been considered a moderate civil servant acceptable to both factions, resigned due to what he termed harmful behavior by both sides.

    Elections - fresh news by plazoo.com 2010

  • Hani Qawasmi, who had been considered a moderate civil servant acceptable to both factions, resigned due to what he termed harmful behavior by both sides.

    Elections - fresh news by plazoo.com 2010

  • "It became clear very quickly that really all this shampoo did was clean your hair and didn't put what they called harmful chemicals back into your hair," Sheldon told CBC Radio's

    CBC | Top Stories News 2009

  • The Pope lamented what he called the harmful and destructive influence of some forms of modern culture.

    BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition 2008

  • Then we must ask why God needed to even bother with awkward designs like the flawed and ridiculously concocted ones we see in nature; why, for instance, did God give us skin as protection from germs and foreign particles, and yet not make us to thrive on what we know as harmful radiation?

    Debunking Christianity Joe E. Holman 2008

  • (B2 is one of the few vitamins with which overdoses result in harmful effects).

    Richard Kuhn and the Chemical Institute: Double Bonds and Biological Mechanisms 2010

  • Perhaps even more harmful is the stereotyping of marijuana smokers as lazy, dumb, slow, passive, apathetic, memory-challenged junk-food addicts.

    Steve Bloom: Legalization or Bust: A Brief History of Marijuana Prohibition Steve Bloom 2010

  • Perhaps even more harmful is the stereotyping of marijuana smokers as lazy, dumb, slow, passive, apathetic, memory-challenged junk-food addicts.

    Steve Bloom: Legalization or Bust: A Brief History of Marijuana Prohibition Steve Bloom 2010

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