Meaning & use
innocence
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Meanings
noununcountablelegal
The fact of not having committed a crime or done anything wrong.
Grammar: Often used with a possessive or after prove: she proved her innocence.
Patterns
- prove someone's innocence
- maintain your innocence
The defendant insisted on his innocence from the first day.
New evidence finally proved her innocence.
A person is presumed to have innocence until a court decides otherwise.
noununcountable
A simple, trusting quality of someone who lacks experience of the world's harsher side, as in a young child.
Grammar: Often linked with childhood: the innocence of youth.
Patterns
- the innocence of something
- lose your innocence
The innocence of the children's questions made the adults smile.
Many stories describe the loss of innocence that comes with growing up.
He asked in all innocence whether the museum was free.
noununcountable
The state of being free from harmful intent or responsibility for a harmful result.
Grammar: Used for blamelessness in an everyday, not legal, way.
Patterns
- in all innocence
- protest your innocence
She protested her innocence when her brother blamed her for the broken lamp.
He said it in complete innocence and never meant to upset anyone.
The innocence of the remark became clear after she explained it.
Common combinations
- prove someone's innocence
- The lawyer worked for years to prove his client's innocence.
- maintain your innocence
- She maintained her innocence throughout the trial.
- presumption of innocence
- The presumption of innocence is a basic legal principle.
- childhood innocence
- The film captures childhood innocence beautifully.
- lose your innocence
- The novel shows a boy losing his innocence during the war.
- in all innocence
- I asked, in all innocence, whether she was leaving.
Synonyms and how they differ
- blamelessness
- Blamelessness is a rarer and more formal word that focuses only on the lack of fault, not on naivety.
- naivety
- Naivety stresses a lack of worldly experience, often with a slightly critical tone, while innocence is usually positive.
- purity
- Purity suggests moral or physical cleanness and sounds more lofty than innocence.
- guiltlessness
- Guiltlessness is a literary word only used for not being guilty, so it is narrower than innocence.
Opposites
Word family
- innocent adjective
- not guilty, or lacking experience of evil
- innocently adverb
- in a way that shows no bad intention
- innocent noun
- a person who is not guilty, or a trusting child
- innocuous adjective
- harmless, not likely to offend or injure
Commonly confused: innocence or innocents?
innocence vs innocents
Innocents is a plural noun meaning people who are not guilty or naive, whereas innocence names the quality.
Practice
After the new evidence appeared, the court finally accepted his ___.
Choose one answer.
Innocence means not being guilty, which is what a court would accept after new evidence. The other nouns do not fit the legal meaning.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “innocence”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.