inimical
adj/ɪˈnɪ.mɪ.kəl/
Etymology From Late Latin inimīcālis (“hostile”), from inimīcus (“enemy”) (from in- (“not”) + amīcus (“friend”)) + -ālis.
1
Harmful in effect.
- Slaves knew that some of the treatments worsened problems and, perhaps most important, they realized that a master's interest in their fitness for work was sometimes inimical to their health.2008, Harriet A. Washington, “Southern Discomfort”, in Medical Apartheid, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, page 66:
- She doesn’t want to touch it, and indeed every particle of her screams against doing so because it is somehow inimical to her.2020, N. K. Jemisin, The City We Became, Orbit, page 178:
1 more example
- From its inception, the index has provided a window onto the history of the book, for it took the advent of a particular type of book — the codex, a sheaf of pages fastened along one edge — to make an index a practical possibility. The progenitor of the modern bound book, the codex gradually supplanted the scroll, a medium inimical to the indexer’s art.2022 February 15, Margalit Fox, “Look It Up? Only if You’re Dishonest and Ignorant”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 30 Jul 2022:
2
Unfriendly, hostile.
- Her inimical attitude precludes romance.
- Synonyms
- inimic, inimicable, antagonistic
- Antonyms
- amicable
- Derived terms
- inimicality, inimically, inimicalness, uninimical
- Related terms
- enemy