What's the difference between harmless and incapable?

Harmless


Definition:

  • (a.) Free from harm; unhurt; as, to give bond to save another harmless.
  • (a.) Free from power or disposition to harm; innocent; inoffensive.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) For the mouthrinses containing 0.05% NaF the retention was about 0.4 mg F. This value is considered to be harmless.
  • (2) A harmless slice of Americana from the best fans in the world.
  • (3) Most hemangiomas are small, harmless birthmarks that appear soon after birth, proliferate for 8 to 18 months, and then slowly regress over the next 5 to 8 years, leaving normal or slightly blemished skin.
  • (4) Pelvic phleboliths are common and are generally considered to be harmless.
  • (5) It also intrigues me that the reaction of some women when challenged on this question so uncannily echoes the defence of sexist men in the 60s and 70s: come off it, love, it's just a bit of harmless fun.
  • (6) The high frequency of coxa magna in these patients and its possible role in the development of degenerative arthritis indicate that transient synovitis of the hip should not be considered a harmless disease until further epidemiologic studies are available.
  • (7) The activity and harmlessness of the virus was tested on sheep.
  • (8) The adults of the trematode occurring in the nasal sinuses and posterior nasal passage of the dolphins are considered as practically harmless for the host but thier eggs, aspirated deep into the bronchial tree, may initiate a foreign-body of inflammatory reaction in the lungs and continuous aspiration of such eggs may provoke a chronic pneumonia condition.
  • (9) Of all patients examined during that period for palpable breast tumors, 90 (=16.5%) were spared a breast operation thanks to fine-needle aspirations confirming the presence of harmless cysts only.
  • (10) They show once more that the treatment is harmless for the fetus.
  • (11) They are usually harmless, though they can cause an allergic reaction in a minority of people.
  • (12) Hepatic vascular exclusion (from 24 to 30mn) was harmless to the remnant liver and the kidneys.
  • (13) As regards post-therapeutic monitoring, MRI with gadolinium contrast injection is harmless and will make it possible to follow these patients regularly and to detect recurrences.
  • (14) CT, being a non-traumatic, harmless diagnostic method, improves the clinical evaluation of the patient and can facilitate the choice of the most suitable therapeutic modalities, as well as the follow-up of their results.
  • (15) Symptoms of bleeding, almost always harmless skin or mucosal bleeding, were found in 45% of patients with a history of intravenous drug abuse and in 18% of the homo- or bisexual men.
  • (16) A paradigm shift has occurred in which toxicity has been recognized at levels long held to be harmless.
  • (17) These results suggest that elevated glycine levels may be harmless in blood, but lethal in brain.
  • (18) It is superior to many other methods since it is non-invasive, harmless, and does not rely on the metabolism of a contrast agent.
  • (19) With equal reliability (96 percent), lumbar phlebography without catheterism is, by its simplicity and harmlessness and the absence of minor and major venous complications, preferable to phlebography by catheterism.
  • (20) The nature of the fistulous connection makes the release of the balloon inflated with silicone completely harmless.

Incapable


Definition:

  • (a.) Wanting in ability or qualification for the purpose or end in view; not large enough to contain or hold; deficient in physical strength, mental or moral power, etc.; not capable; as, incapable of holding a certain quantity of liquid; incapable of endurance, of comprehension, of perseverance, of reform, etc.
  • (a.) Not capable of being brought to do or perform, because morally strong or well disposed; -- used with reference to some evil; as, incapable of wrong, dishonesty, or falsehood.
  • (a.) Not in a state to receive; not receptive; not susceptible; not able to admit; as, incapable of pain, or pleasure; incapable of stain or injury.
  • (a.) Unqualified or disqualified, in a legal sense; as, a man under thirty-five years of age is incapable of holding the office of president of the United States; a person convicted on impeachment is thereby made incapable of holding an office of profit or honor under the government.
  • (a.) As a term of disgrace, sometimes annexed to a sentence when an officer has been cashiered and rendered incapable of serving his country.
  • (n.) One who is morally or mentally weak or inefficient; an imbecile; a simpleton.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Absorption of this serum with embryo cells eliminated cytotoxicity against MCA-2 and MCA-12 cells, but was incapable of lowering the titer against MCA-3 cells below 1:40.
  • (2) CP analogues that lacked the NH group at N3 or were otherwise incapable of alkyl isocyanate release were inactive.
  • (3) An analysis of 22 non-invasive EPEC TnphoA mutants revealed that seven have insertions in the EAF plasmid and are incapable of localized adherence.
  • (4) Exact comparisons of recovery of ocular tone (Maddox Wing test) between the anaesthetics were not possible as both Althesin and methohexitone rendered some patients incapable of taking the tests in the early post-operative period.
  • (5) Similarly, the fetus is an ideal recipient of allogeneic fetal cells as it is incapable of rejecting them early in gestation.
  • (6) Myocardial perfusion is best evaluated at rest and during exercise, however, alternative methods have been sought to increase coronary blood flow in patients incapable of performing adequate exercise.
  • (7) Cocaine was considered incapable of producing dependence in 1980 but was recently proclaimed the drug of greatest national health concern.
  • (8) We have documented that the profoundly depressed postcardiotomy left ventricle, initially incapable of ejection, can recover during total left ventricular unloading with the abdominal left ventricular assist device support over a seven-day period.
  • (9) Results are presented which show that the D-xylose isomerases present in Streptomyces olivaceus and Streptomyces phaeochromogenes NRRL B-3559 are incapable of utilizing D-lyxose as a substrate.
  • (10) In contrast, all three molecules were incapable of inducing IFN-alpha when added into either purified monocyte or lymphocyte cultures.
  • (11) Extracts of liver and lung were incapable of catabolizing any of the analogues.
  • (12) In fact the then president, Amadou Toumani Touré, known as "ATT" more out of derision than any sense of affection, was viewed as deeply corrupt and incapable of delivering the changes that Mali – still one of the five least-developed countries in the world – needed.
  • (13) On Thursday, conservative analyst Ross Douthat wrote: “A party whose leading factions often seemed incapable of budging from 1980s-era dogma suddenly caved completely.” On Friday, former top Barack Obama strategist David Axelrod tweeted : “The Day After: seems as if @GOP establishment is measuring @realDonaldTrump as a moldable vessel.
  • (14) I seem incapable of capturing the stories of those I meet.
  • (15) It can bring about specialized transduction of proAB and phoE mutants of E. coli, but it is incapable of general transduction.
  • (16) It said Damascus had proved itself "incapable of using its weapons systems proportionately or discriminately" and had fired lethal Scud missiles against its own cities, such as Aleppo.
  • (17) In the 1990s he was almost incapable of not writing a masterpiece – The Human Stain, The Plot Against America, I Married a Communist.
  • (18) Methaemoglobin is incapable of transporting oxygen.
  • (19) Sheep infection trials indicate that the PLD-negative C. pseudotuberculosis strain (Toxminus) is incapable of inducing caseous lymphadentis (cheesy gland) even at doses two logs higher than that at which the wild-type strain produces the disease.
  • (20) Cotransformants of yeast cells by two partially homologous plasmids, one of which is incapable of autonomous replication, has been used to construct multiply marked recombinant plasmids.