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benign
in a sentence

show 188 more with this conextual meaning
  • The speaker's hands were folded benignly on his chest.   (source)
    benignly = mildly or harmlessly
  • La Fayette also had the authority to put Bonaparte in command over Frederic, if he desired. ... La Fayette smiled benignly. "General Bonaparte is under your command, Frederic. That will not change. Ever."   (source)
    benignly = mildly
  • The New England states use a terse form of instruction... New York State shouts at you the whole time. Do this. Do that. ... Every few feet an imperious command. In Ohio the signs are more benign. They offer friendly advice, and are more like suggestions.   (source)
    benign = kindly or mild
  • His air is that of a benign and learned mathematician about to be quizzed by a schoolboy on matters of short division.   (source)
    benign = kindly or harmless
  • ... and it seemed to me that they looked on me benignly...   (source)
    benignly = kindly
  • His intentions were benign.   (source)
  • Another benign visit to the mayor's house.†   (source)
  • When a starving mammal ingests an alkaloid, even one as benign as caffeine, it's going to get hit much harder by it than it normally would because they lack the glucose reserves necessary to excrete the stuff.†   (source)
  • They were benign, careening about for reasons of their own.†   (source)
  • He nodded, looked at her benignly.†   (source)
  • I suspected this was like a benign landowner planting the odd potato just "to keep his hand in."†   (source)
  • I told Williams that without his mustache, he had a benign look.†   (source)
  • The adults were benign with the young ones, and tougher with the juveniles, occasionally snapping at the older animals when their play got too rough.†   (source)
  • It was a benign summer night, breezy and thick.†   (source)
  • She had five minutes left—five minutes during which she not only had to identify the poisons in seven goblets, but arrange them in the order of the most benign to the deadliest.†   (source)
  • I can think of no benign reason for it.†   (source)
  • Often, in the minutes she had to herself each day as she walked from the bungalow to the house, she would reflect on the benign accidents of her life.†   (source)
  • The first day of class he had looked up from the podium when he came to Gogol's name on the roster, an expression of benign amazement on his face.†   (source)
  • It lies benignly under the flesh of my chest.†   (source)
  • The bright, open freeway seemed benign enough.†   (source)
  • Construction of the Mines Building had gone smoothly, thanks to a winter that by Chicago standards had been mercifully benign.†   (source)
  • He stared into it, smiling benignly at the seahorses, as if looking at his own children.†   (source)
  • "I'm afraid I—I summoned a rather benign illness.†   (source)
  • He considered it a benign virus.†   (source)
  • Some of the science it espoused later proved to be not so benign — and some of the scientists it promoted were unusual role models for the nation's children.†   (source)
  • During all of this she looked at him benignly.†   (source)
  • At first the club concerned itself only with benign aspects of school life.†   (source)
  • It was the benign counterpart of the Nyodene menace.†   (source)
  • On the wall behind him there was a benign, mouse-haired calendar-Jesus with lipstick and rouge, and a lurid, jeweled heart glowing through his clothes.†   (source)
  • He'd been in a so-called "closed-air bassinette," which is a more benign description of an incubator.†   (source)
  • The Governor's wife wears an expression of yearning piety, tempered with resignation, whereas Reverend Verringer manages to look both benign and disapproving; there's a glinting around his eyes as if he's wearing spectacles, although he is not.†   (source)
  • I haven't given any consideration to what I might do if he resists, but I know the terms of the relationship are changing here and now I am no longer a benign presence, the affable new guy in his life who brings casual conversation and occasional gifts, asking nothing in return.†   (source)
  • The ultimate effect is strangely homey—it looks less like a bar than someone's benignly neglected fixer-upper.†   (source)
  • It was not the most benign season on the ocean, due to the December trade winds, and the historic schooner, the only one that would risk the crossing, might find itself blown by a contrary wind back to the port where it had started.†   (source)
  • Benign Feyd-Rautha, the compassionate one who saves them from a beast.†   (source)
  • It's wrong to call them benign.†   (source)
  • Mameha just sipped at her tea and looked at me with a benign expression on her perfect, oval face.†   (source)
  • The action was so graceful and inclusively benign.†   (source)
  • It is an infringement even if the intent may be perceived as benign and socially valid.†   (source)
  • Then, thinking it would be easier to forget about Patch if I was looking at something more benign, I wandered over to the wall of lotions.†   (source)
  • This injustice rankled, and at that moment I saw Dr. Kerr less as a benefactor than as a not-altogether-benign dictator.†   (source)
  • "I'm so glad nature is not benign," he remarked.†   (source)
  • "Are you here from that formula company?" she asked, nodding across the room to the box on the sofa, the red cherubs smiling benignly.†   (source)
  • He smiled benignly at me across the fire.†   (source)
  • None shall be able to cast a spell unless they have permission, and only magics that are benign and beneficial shall be allowed.†   (source)
  • Thank goodness it really was a benign cyst like the doctor had said.†   (source)
  • Those were the relatively benign wounds.†   (source)
  • Calrnly he struck a wooden match and sucked noisily at his pipe with an eloquent air of benign and magnanimous forgiveness.†   (source)
  • But when he came out of his room he was no longer a benign uncle idling away his retirement years.†   (source)
  • Kate was a twin, but she'd experienced a benign form of twinning.†   (source)
  • A benign cyst, it wasn't a life-threatening ailment, but it was unsightly, to say the least.†   (source)
  • Cedric smiles benignly as Clarence plunges into Romans, chapter 8, verse 35: "Whoooooo," he intones, "shall separate us from the love of Christ?†   (source)
  • The report said benign," I said.†   (source)
  • Most of these stories were benign—a strange coincidence, an intriguing twist.†   (source)
  • A six-foot stepladder had been kicked aside and was lying benignly nearby.†   (source)
  • Above a spacious fireplace an oil portrait of the Founder looked down at me remotely, benign, sad, and in that hot instant, profoundly disillusioned.†   (source)
  • The names were strange names, the dead were benignly alien to me.†   (source)
  • It would create an eruption of static on British intelligence's intercepts and later he would smile benignly at good friends in the Connaught bar who asked him if there was anything new out of Washington, knowing that this one or that one had "relatives" in MI-Five.†   (source)
  • For Adams any sustained equivalent of Franklin's benign calm would have been impossible.†   (source)
  • A reporter and columnist on the business desk, Shavers was as pompous and as awkward at small talk as he thought he was charming; however, he was benign in his self-delusion and touching in his mistaken conviction that he was a spellbinding raconteur.†   (source)
  • He kissed me again on both cheeks and with no self-consciousness at all looked into my eyes with benign tenderness and said, "I love you, Will."†   (source)
  • The abnormality in my spine turned out to be benign; I was able to have surgery and am cured.†   (source)
  • The smile is benign.†   (source)
  • And he, meanwhile, sat back and watched all this benignly.†   (source)
  • Goode smiled benignly, as though this tiny skirmishhad been a way for him to evaluate Cotton's mettle.†   (source)
  • She wasn't associating with known radicals, and her Internet activity was benign.†   (source)
  • Again, acting essentially benign.†   (source)
  • I can, of course, imagine it being deconstructed nowadays as a paradigm of colonialism, with Kevin figuring as the benign imperialist (or the missionary in the wake of the imperialist), the one who intervenes and appropriates the indigenous life and interferes with its pristine ecology.†   (source)
  • I saw smiles, benign faces, courtesies—a side of the white man I had not seen in weeks, but I remembered too well the other side.†   (source)
  • As for myself, in that brief time I had begun to achieve a benign, tingling high so surprisingly intense that I became a little uneasy trying to manage my own euphoria.†   (source)
  • …the lights have been gradually coming up on the main room, where we see the family informally gathered, talking, but in pantomime; KATE sits darning socks near a cradle, occasionally rocking it; CAPTAIN KELLER in spectacles is working over newspaper pages at a table; a benign visitor in a hat, AUNT EV, is sharing the sewing basket, putting the finishing touches on a big shapeless doll made out of towels; an indolent young man, JAMES KELLER, is at the window watching the children.†   (source)
  • Hodge was a wide, benign man in white socks, with a face as orange as the bricks of his house and hands like rusty shovels.†   (source)
  • In fact, they could make it show to their favor, as a benign gesture of divine graciousness.†   (source)
  • Tomorrow was school — the day she would smile benignly into the faces saying silently or aloud, You did good!†   (source)
  • He nodded benignly at the court.†   (source)
  • Old T'sung H'sai, the president, a portly mandarin with shaven skull and benign features, stood in the center of his office and raged.†   (source)
  • she was only another lady in the neighborhood, but a relatively benign presence.   (source)
    benign = harmless (kind or mild)
  • It has apparently mutated to a benign form.   (source)
    benign = harmless
  • His face was fatherly and benign, and his eyes twinkled with friendship.   (source)
    benign = kindly
  • For as she gazed toward the ceiling now through pupils gradually shrinking back to their normal focus, she was aware that Emmi had stood up and was regarding her with an expression resembling benignness, or at least a certain tolerant curiosity, as if there had been expelled from her mind her fury at Sophie for being both a Polack and a thief; the nursing seizure appeared to have been cathartic, allowing her enough in the way of an exercise of authority to satisfy the most frustrated…†   (source)
  • But at first it was not so benign to all.†   (source)
  • Professor Umbridge was standing stock still, staring at Dumbledore, who continued to smile benignly.†   (source)
  • No longer did the weather look so benign.†   (source)
  • The bright, open freeway seemed benign enough.†   (source)
  • It's only benign because we have immunities.†   (source)
  • If I'm lucky, it might turn out to be somewhat benign.†   (source)
  • I know women whose entire personas are woven from a benign mediocrity.†   (source)
  • If anything, his eyes conveyed a look of benign misgiving, the result of some lifelong despondency.†   (source)
  • He shone like a Sun God, benignly warming and brightening his dark subjects.†   (source)
  • Lagos thought that herpes simplex might be a modem, benign descendant of Asherah.†   (source)
  • If anything her tone was incurious and weary, though benign.†   (source)
  • Establish a benign contact as soon as you can.†   (source)
  • This hall seemed very benign after the gloom of the ghoulish stone sewers.†   (source)
  • His face was as benign as ever, but unlike before, I sensed a strange blankness behind the facade.†   (source)
  • Glass twinkled benignly in the hot afternoon sunlight pouring through the windows over the sink.†   (source)
  • She smiles at me, the smile of an angel, benign but remote.†   (source)
  • I couldn't see Valium as the benign drug the doctor made it out to be.†   (source)
  • Watch that mole on your left foot, but I'm sure it's benign."†   (source)
  • Alan glanced at him as he set the tray on the bed, but the waiter's eyes seemed benign.†   (source)
  • Milo responded to his request with a benign smile.†   (source)
  • All monsters and beasts have their benign moments.†   (source)
  • And Dr. Bledsoe sat with a benign smile of inward concentration.†   (source)
  • Well, sir, yours were read as grade four, atypical, probably benign.†   (source)
  • The beams switch to low, and Berger smiles benignly.†   (source)
  • Underneath the benign mass of lipoma, she had found something.†   (source)
  • But on a day like today, we can pretend nature is benign.†   (source)
  • In that day pus was thought to be benign, a proof that a wound was healing properly.†   (source)
  • Houses built in the benign spring and early summer took waves in their second-story windows.†   (source)
  • He was a benign figure, a little rustic, and his hair was white.†   (source)
  • BRADY sits grandly at another table, fanning himself with benign self-assurance.†   (source)
  • He grasps the podium and stares down at them sternly, BRADY is benign.†   (source)
  • MATTHEW HARRISON BRADY comes on, a benign giant of a man, wearing a pith helmet.†   (source)
  • As certainly as he had known that the doe was benign, he knew that Ron had to be the one to wield the sword.†   (source)
  • Atticus Finch had watched Henry's ragged pursuit of his daughter with benign objectivity, giving advice when asked for it, but absolutely declining to become involved.†   (source)
  • I lurry, still clutching the telescope and trainers, jumped the last lew stairs and followed Dumbledore, who had settled himself in i he armchair nearest the fire and was taking in the surroundings wilh an expression of benign interest.†   (source)
  • But now in July they're back and everything is at its alivest and every foot of these sloughs is humming and cricking and buzzing and chirping, a whole community of millions of living things living out their lives in a kind of benign continuum.†   (source)
  • He settled himself on the throne-like chair on which he had been painted and smiled benignly upon Harry 'Dumbledore thinks very highly of you, as I am sure you know,' he said comfortably.†   (source)
  • Considered benign, for the most part.†   (source)
  • The size of a swan, with magnificent scarlet-and-gold plumage, he swished his long tail and blinked benignly at Harry.†   (source)
  • Benign?†   (source)
  • The other face, Jess's face, was never out of my mind, leaner and more hawkish, more suspicious, less benign.†   (source)
  • She tried to learn more from the friends who painted with her in the sewing room, but they had heard only benign comments concerning the serenade by solo piano.†   (source)
  • The benign, friendly face of it all.†   (source)
  • I missed the customers, their company, and the easy chatter that swelled and dipped gently like a benign sea around me.†   (source)
  • In the way of the body and other people's judgment I enjoy a benign approval in Kilanga that I have never, ever known in Bethlehem, Georgia.†   (source)
  • If there was mystery or contradiction in a friend, Leon took the long view and found a benign explanation.†   (source)
  • Smiling benignly in the doorway, stands none other than the Chairman for the Committee on Analysis of Ideas and Study of Methods at the University of Chicago.†   (source)
  • I chose to believe that God, a benign God, would understand our sufferings and forgive us our trespasses.†   (source)
  • He hoped his imagination had made Tinder's injury worse than it was—that it might look benign by the light of day.†   (source)
  • "Not always benign," Hiro says, remembering a friend of his who died of AIDS-related complications; in the last days, he had iio herpes lesions from his lips all the way down his throat.†   (source)
  • It was hard to believe that this soft-spoken man with the friendly expression was the resident torturer; he was all the more terrifying to me because his exterior was so benign.†   (source)
  • My mother had gone to the hospital for an appointment, to find out about a benign brain tumor a CAT scan had revealed a month ago.†   (source)
  • Her monthly letters to her son Jose Arcadio at that time did not carry a string of lies and she hid from him only her correspondence with the invisible doctors, who had diagnosed a benign tumor in her large intestine and were preparing her for a telepathic operation.†   (source)
  • The silent Monk smiled benignly.†   (source)
  • The others thought she was laughing in relief, laughing in the spirit of a swirling day, and it made them all smile benignly.†   (source)
  • Mr. de Klerk, for his part, suggested that the system of separate development had been conceived as a benign idea, but had not worked in practice.†   (source)
  • Benignly she waved them on and abruptly turned into a narrow side street, suddenly pedaling faster than before.†   (source)
  • Instead, they hovered like benign spirits, praying, continuing to light fires to scare away ghosts eager for Snow Flower, but always leaving us to ourselves.†   (source)
  • The most benign was that Galbatorix was simply hiding, and that Eragon and his companions were having to search for the king.†   (source)
  • I wash, he dries, and he asks me benign, avuncular, maddening questions, such as how do I like Grade Nine.†   (source)
  • I mean if you get into an argument with them, all they do is get this terribly benign expression on their—†   (source)
  • There's no way to reconcile the idea of a benign God with what happened to everyone on that plane…and to those of us who're going to spend the rest of our lives missing them."†   (source)
  • I believe in the right to own property, to maintain it against the benign suffocation of a government that would tax more and more of it away.†   (source)
  • The lad looks like he's had about enough for today," I said in what I hoped was an affable, rather benign voice.†   (source)
  • He stood up front beside a microphone, his feet planted solidly on the dirty canvas-covered platform, looking from side to side; his posture dignified and benign, like a bemused father listening to the performance of his adoring children.†   (source)
  • I embroidered her a handkerchief wishing her health and happiness in the coming months, then decorated it with silvery fish jumping from a pale-blue stream, believing that this was the most benign—and cool—image I could create for one who would be pregnant during summer.†   (source)
  • They looked beautiful and benign—placid, unchanging formations that betrayed nothing of the violence inside.†   (source)
  • General Peckem laughed benignly.†   (source)
  • In those late months of autumn and in the first chill of that benign Carolina winter, I knew one thing for certain: It was not Charleston I was trying to earn.†   (source)
  • He smiles benignly.†   (source)
  • The decibel level of the conversation was suddenly reduced, and the general, aware that his presence inevitably brought stares, amiable waves and not infrequently mild applause, smiled benignly at no one in particular and yet at everyone as he guided his lady to the deserted table where a small folded card read Réservé.†   (source)
  • Each was a real person, yes, but each was also a marionette, controlled by an unseen puppet master, string-tugged into postures of jubilation, winking glass eyes and cracking wooden smiles and laughing with the thrown voices of hidden ventriloquists, for the sole purpose of deceiving Joe into believing that this was a benign world that merited delight.†   (source)
  • —Benign.†   (source)
  • I was connected to the heartbeats and pulses of my roommates by a benign, vital symbiosis,and I felt that I depended on them for blood and oxygen, and if one of them had abandoned the rest of us at that very instant, my spirit and my body could not have absorbed such trauma, such loss.†   (source)
  • Instead, she picked a handful of thoughts and memories that seemed benign and strove to ignore the rest—strove to convince herself that everything she was, and had ever been, consisted of only those few elements.†   (source)
  • —Benign.†   (source)
  • We must accept-even when those were absent, and the men who made the railroads and ships and towers of stone, were before our eyes, in the flesh, their voices different, unweighted with recognizable danger and their delight in our songs more sincere seeming, their regard for our welfare marked by an almost benign and impersonal indifference.†   (source)
  • Some of the enchantments seemed benign, even helpful—such as one spell whose only apparent purpose was to keep the hinges of a door from creaking, and which drew its power from an egg-sized piece of crystal set within the face of the door—but Eragon dared not leave any of the king's spells intact, no matter how harmless they appeared.†   (source)
  • Turning suddenly, seeing that face--wide, white, benign, expressionless as a planet depopulated by fire and flood and war and plague--eyes like a bubonic rat's, the hat high, high on the forehead yet perfectly level, like a child's fedora placed, tres amusant, on the head of a fat, new corpse.†   (source)
  • When we had finished we threw the empty leaves to the goats that had gathered, expectant but patient for their meal, and that too was a satisfying thing, to see them eating leaves and cups, crunching them in their mouths with soft happy movements and looking at us with their mild benign eyes.†   (source)
  • Mount Toro, on the brother range to the west, was a rounded benign mountain, and to the north Monterey Bay shone like a blue platter.†   (source)
  • "Why not?" he urged with that swarthily intense and furrowed expression which so often caused his smile to resemble a benign scowl.†   (source)
  • Bleared with sleep, her slab of a face looked monstrous yet ethereally placid and benign, like one of those Easter Island effigies.†   (source)
  • As she spoke, the benign cognac allowed me to run my fingertips very gently over the edges of her expressive mouth, silver-bright with vermilion lipstick.†   (source)
  • He seemed irreproachably benign.†   (source)
  • It may be hard to believe, but the vastness and complexity of Auschwitz permitted some benign medical work as well as the unspeakable experiments which—given the assumption that Dr. von Niemand was a man of some sensibility—he would have shunned.†   (source)
  • Two full weeks had gone by, and when Sophie suggested to the doctor, with a great reticence, that perhaps she was in need of an M.D., a real diagnostician, he flew into the closest approximation of a rage she had ever seen in this almost pathologically benign man.†   (source)
  • Sophie stirred next to Nathan, gazed at the wall where the New England grandmother from another century, trapped in an amber ectoplasmic halo, gazed back beneath her kerchief with an expression both benign and perplexed.†   (source)
  • Larry's brief conference with me had been in the nature of an appeal on his part, an appeal to me to keep an eye on Nathan and to act as liaison between the Pink Palace and himself—to serve both as sentinel and as a kind of benign watchdog who might be able to gently nip at Nathan's heels and keep him under control.†   (source)
  • There was something so supportive, so friendly and benign, so caring in his voice, and everything about his presence inspired such immediate trust, that when they got back to her room (hot and stifling in the slant of afternoon sunlight, where she again had a brief fainting spell and slumped against him), she had not the slightest trace of discomfiture in feeling him gently unbutton and remove her soiled dress and then with delicate but firm pressure push her slowly down to her bed,…†   (source)
  • …the Nazis of which Rubenstein writes (extending Arendt's thesis) is a "society of total domination," evolving directly from the institution of chattel slavery as it was practiced by the great nations of the West, yet urged on to its despotic apotheosis at Auschwitz through an innovative concept which by contrast casts a benign light on old-fashioned plantation slavery even at its most barbaric: this blood-fresh concept was based on the simple but absolute expendability of human life.†   (source)
  • "There's a little raise along with the job," he said benignly.†   (source)
  • The full moon shone high in the blue vault, majestic, lonely, benign.†   (source)
  • Chang acknowledged the remark with benign seriousness.†   (source)
  • In the myths the benign god Enid appears typically in the role of the helper.†   (source)
  • /6 What such a figure represents is the benign, protecting power of destiny.†   (source)
  • There are facts, as, for example: "The handsome young man in the grey suit, whose reserve contrasted so strangely with the loquacity of the others, now brushed the crumbs from his waistcoat and, with a characteristic gesture at once commanding and benign, made a sign to the waiter, who came instantly and returned a moment later with the bill discreetly folded upon a plate."†   (source)
  • Things are going to get so bad under the benign rule of our good friend Rufus Bullock that Georgia is going to vomit him up.†   (source)
  • 52 Hence the figures worshiped in the temples of the world are by no means always beautiful, always benign, or even necessarily virtuous.†   (source)
  • With an aged an inscrutable midnight face she seems to contemplate him with a detachment almost godlike but not at all benign.†   (source)
  • All laughter had gone from him and all tears with it, and now only a deep untroubled gentleness was left, a wordless faith, a fixity, mellow and benign.†   (source)
  • It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.†   (source)
  • So I did my daily tasks and ate my daily bread and saw the old familiar faces, and smiled benignly like a priest.†   (source)
  • So I corrected myself, and in much the mood of a priest who looks down with benign pity on the sweat and striving, I entered the Governor's office, and walked past the receptionist and, with a perfunctory knock, into the inside.†   (source)
  • Reb Schulim puckered his lips, cleared his throat, lifted grave, benign eyes to David's face, but made no answer.†   (source)
  • At last the tension broke, and Conway felt beyond it the power of a bland and benign persuasion; the echoes swam into silence, till all that was left was his own heartbeat, pounding like a gong.†   (source)
  • He conducted excursions, suggested occupations, recommended books, talked with his slow, careful fluency whenever there was an awkward pause at meals, and was on every occasion benign, courteous, and resourceful.†   (source)
  • Or it may be that he here discovers for the first time that there is a benign power everywhere supporting him in his superhuman passage.†   (source)
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