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adjective

pernicious

exceedingly harmful

In a sentence

Six example sentences with pernicious, each labelled with its topic.

  • The vine looks harmless in a garden, but its pernicious spread has smothered entire river valleys in the southeast.

    Environment

  • Decades of pernicious inflation wiped out the savings of a generation and left pensioners buying bread with sacks of notes.

    Economics

  • The flaw was pernicious precisely because it corrupted backups silently for months before anyone noticed a single missing file.

    Technology

  • The most pernicious habit is comparing yourself to strangers online, since the comparison never ends.

    Psychology

  • A pernicious rumor about the water supply spread faster than the council's correction and emptied three schools.

    Politics

  • The fee looked tiny, but its pernicious effect over thirty years took a quarter of the pension.

    Finance

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Found in these word lists

Found in 9 published word listsRecognized

Each source is a published word list that contains pernicious. No exam board publishes an official GRE, GMAT or SAT list; GMAT words come from GRE lists and the Academic Word List.