noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A surreptitious harmfulness, quality of entrapment, or treacherousness; the characteristic of being insidious. uncountable, usually

   "This lent a new insidiousness to his temptation, since her contempt would be a refuge from his own."

2. 2
   the quality of being designed to entrap wordnet
3. 3
   subtle and cumulative harmfulness (especially of a disease) wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

artartfulnessartificecanninessclevernesscraft

Example

More examples

"This lent a new insidiousness to his temptation, since her contempt would be a refuge from his own."

Etymology

From insidious + -ness.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.