What is Benign?

Nothing negative here.

The word "benign" comes from the root Latin word benignus, meaning to beget. As the root word no longer is a spoken word, the meaning has changed somewhat from its earliest incarnations to what we now look on as an adjective to describe a person or circumstance without a negative impact.

Use

The word is primarily used to describe people or intangibles that have no negative impact on their surroundings, such as "a benign wind" or "the use of explosives to create filler for the dam was benign."

Medical

The term is used frequently to describe the effects of cancers, when the said cancer is found to not be harmful to the person involved.

Colloquial Use

As a word, benign is not really one that's used in too many everyday circumstances; as such, it doesn't have very many common day usages.

Prose Writing

There are many instances where benign can be used in this type of writing as a descriptive term for what we would commonly call people or places that have an almost healing quality to them, which is where the word is generally used.

Warnings

To use the word properly, remember: It's not just for specifics but can be used to express yourself creatively and uniquely, like any other word. Choosing carefully where to use the word "benign" is the hard part.

References

• Merriam-Webster Dictionary: Benign