benign
adjective
Simple meaning
Not posing any serious threat to health.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
bihnynSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
bɪˈnaɪn
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
medicine
Not posing any serious threat to health; not particularly aggressive or recurrent.
Kind; gentle; mild.
of a climate or environment
Mild and favorable
in combination
Not harmful to the environment.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced (estimated)
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Not posing any serious threat to health; not particularly aggressive or recurrent.
Used this way, benign is a specialist word with a clearly unfavourable pull. This is a clinical use: it belongs to medical description, where it is factual rather than emotive.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Clinical and detached
Where it naturally appears
- Medicine/healthcare
- Science
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use benign
- “Luckily, the doctor said the growth was benign and not dangerous.”adjective
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A tumor that is not cancerous.
A tumor that is not cancerous.
Enlarged prostate.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: not posing any serious threat to health
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.