What's the difference between inoffensive and offensive?

Inoffensive


Definition:

  • (a.) Giving no offense, or provocation; causing no uneasiness, annoyance, or disturbance; as, an inoffensive man, answer, appearance.
  • (a.) Harmless; doing no injury or mischief.
  • (a.) Not obstructing; presenting no interruption bindrance.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Associated Newspapers argued that they were entirely innocuous and inoffensive images taken in public places and that the Wellers had previously chosen to open up their private family life to public gaze to a significant degree.
  • (2) Just wide expanses of inoffensive pleasantness so strong that if any of the bloody really jolly nice people on the show were to drop their grins, their overexerted jowls would fall straight into their cake mix.
  • (3) Microphlebography is an inoffensive examination which is easy to perform and useful in treating telangiectasia using this personal technique of micro-coagulo-surgery.
  • (4) He should have said: “We don’t want to be like Belgium, but the press should calm down and recognise that the Queen’s government goes on normally while we take the necessary days to consider how best to form the programme for a new government.” Nick Clegg – the inoffensive ordinary guy who could have been great Read more 3 As party leader, Clegg puzzled us all by ignoring the more senior members of his Commons team including Campbell, Alan Beith, Malcolm Bruce, Simon Hughes and Kennedy.
  • (5) For some of Facebook’s algorithmic tweaks, their goal is clear, articulated, and inoffensive: it has managed to increase the number of organ donors ; it’s managed to boost turnout at US , Indian and Brazilian elections; and, obviously, it’s managed to make a few billion dollars from advertising.
  • (6) They also wanted to make a show that was warm and gentle but not inoffensive and dull.
  • (7) Suárez has been mostly inoffensive year: no charges of racism, no gnawing on opponents' arms.
  • (8) All intelligence reformers have felt strongly this data collection is not an inoffensive activity,” Wyden said.
  • (9) The secret science bill would require the EPA to release the data it uses to devise regulations – an aim seemingly inoffensive enough, except that the EPA often relies on confidential medical records whose release could land it in court.
  • (10) Both wear a British approximation of a Riviera look – chinos, light blazers, inoffensive shirts and soft shoes, and are in deep discussion about how best to seduce young Italian women.
  • (11) In order to ensure a certain diagnosis and to avoid exploratory surgery as far as possible, the authors propose systematic needle puncture of the inververtebral disk--a technique that is simple and inoffensive to carry out in all disks below T4, and that, in a series of 18 cases, gave a success rate of 2 out of 3 (11 positive results).
  • (12) In sum, free speech is not intended to protect benign, uncontroversial, or inoffensive ideas.
  • (13) The word sounds so inoffensive, a synonym for "brush" or "caress".
  • (14) Even I, as an inoffensive left-leaning (and, incidentally, anti-bombing) academic historian, have been subjected to this kind of thing, in comments below the line of articles or blogs I’ve published.
  • (15) The movies that do get official approval and release tend to be inoffensive comedies and historical action movies catering to a youth audience.
  • (16) TICAs may enlarge in time and, seemingly inoffensive, may rupture and lead to death.
  • (17) The term "waste stabilization pond" in its simplest form is applied to a body of water, artificial or natural, employed with the intention of retaining sewage or organic waste waters until the wastes are rendered stable and inoffensive for discharge into receiving waters or on land, through physical, chemical and biological processes commonly referred to as "self-purification" and involving the symbiotic action of algae and bacteria under the influence of sunlight and air.
  • (18) Femen aren't subtle, they aren't inoffensive, and they certainly aren't sorry.
  • (19) For intensive pig units on limited land close to houses, the NIAE has evolved a new system of slurry treatment which can convert all the slurry from a fattening piggery into inoffensive solids.
  • (20) The regulator took into account the BBC’s argument that the use of the term was intended as “an inoffensive, humorous play on words”.

Offensive


Definition:

  • (a.) Giving offense; causing displeasure or resentment; displeasing; annoying; as, offensive words.
  • (a.) Giving pain or unpleasant sensations; disagreeable; revolting; noxious; as, an offensive smell; offensive sounds.
  • (a.) Making the first attack; assailant; aggressive; hence, used in attacking; -- opposed to defensive; as, an offensive war; offensive weapons.
  • (n.) The state or posture of one who offends or makes attack; aggressive attitude; the act of the attacking party; -- opposed to defensive.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The strike, which Central Command said destroyed the Isis fighting position, follows Barack Obama's vow in his televised speech on Wednesday to go on the offensive against Isis more broadly in Iraq and, soon, Syria.
  • (2) New offensive coach Tony Sparano was also a fan of Wildcat packages when he was head coach in Miami.
  • (3) We all do different things.” She was front and centre at Ashley’s side in footage shot last week by Sky News cameramen, who were also part of the “selected media” entourage invited to Shirebrook to launch the group’s charm offensive.
  • (4) Such extravagant claims will be familiar to the scheme's architect, Richard Rogers, whose designs for the office development beside St Paul's Cathedral in the 1980s were torpedoed when Charles implied in a public speech that the plans were more offensive than the rubble left by the Luftwaffe during the blitz.
  • (5) The central hypothesis of our study, then, was that psychotic men, charged with misdemeanor offenses, would be incarcerated for significantly longer periods of time, prior to trial, than their nonpsychotic fellows.
  • (6) It's not that Thompson isn't a a very good player – he and Steph Curry have been running one of the most potent offensives in the NBA over the last two years or so and he's obviously a much better defensive player than Love.
  • (7) It’s no good me swearing on a Bible; I don’t share your faith.” Morrison said: “I will do it, Ray, but I think it’s a very offensive thing for you to ask me to do but I’ll do it if that’s what you require...if you insist I will.” Hadley did not persist with the demand.
  • (8) The mean number of different types of drugs "ever used" was 5.87, and the mean number of drug sale offenses was 4.4.
  • (9) 18) Dallas Cowboys Last season: 8-8 Needs: Offensive line, safety, defensive tackle, running back Pick: Kenny Vaccaro, safety, Texas Tony Romo often carries the can for the Cowboys' offensive calamities, but the truth is that not many quarterbacks look great when they are running for their lives.
  • (10) 3.46am BST Here's the instant response from Ewen MacAskill , at the scene of the debate-crime: Barack Obama staged a strong comeback in his second showdown with Mitt Romney, with the president describing his Republican opponent as "offensive" in suggesting he was playing politics over Benghazi and portraying him as more extreme than George W Bush on social issues such as women's rights.
  • (11) Speaking in Washington on Thursday, the Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, said the offensive underscored the growing threat posed by Isis militants – whom he referred to using the group’s Arabic acronym “Daesh”.
  • (12) Kurdish peshmerga forces backed by the US-led coalition have launched attacks on Islamic State east of Mosul as the campaign to oust the militants stepped up with three offensives across Iraq and Syria.
  • (13) Partners to the drug-treated mice showed a decrease in the occurrence of offensive ambivalence and of the element "rattle".
  • (14) UN envoy Staffan De Mistura halted the latest Syria talks on 3 February, because of major differences between the two sides, exacerbated by increased aerial bombings and a wide military offensive by Syrian troops and their allies under the cover of Russian airstrikes.
  • (15) Top Gear presenter Clarkson, who has been repeatedly criticised for making offensive comments, had condemned Sky for the decision, describing it as "heresy by thought".
  • (16) The unremitting assault on Aleppo by Russian and Syrian forces over recent days is certainly testament to that.” In a week of what residents have described as the worst airstrike campaign since the start of the civil war in Syria , forces loyal to Assad have begun the early stages of a ground offensive aimed at reclaiming eastern Aleppo, which has been under opposition control since 2012.
  • (17) However, the growing offensive against the left by the pro-capitalist wing of the Labour party inevitably had a damaging impact on the LPYS.
  • (18) In April 2009, he launched the first concerted offensive against the extremists, routing them in the Swat valley in the north-west, before starting the continuing operations in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal area, which runs along the Afghan border.
  • (19) The so-called “709 crackdown” has alarmed activists and foreign observers who view the offensive as part of a broader bid to consolidate political control by an increasingly authoritarian leadership.
  • (20) Since the beginning of December, MNLA leaders have been broadcasting their plans to start an offensive, led by the head of the movement's military wing, Colonel Mohamed Ag Najim.

Words possibly related to "inoffensive"