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I've lost a considerable amount of sleep over these two words, not just because they both have nine letters and look almost the same, differing only by a single consonant, but even more so because, while they both signify something bad or undesirable about the way situations unfold or how people behave toward others, they imply the opposite in the manner these odious actions are carried out, but have no obvious clues about their usage.

Despite their length (almost twice as long as an average English word [4.7 letters]), which you'd think would help to disambiguate them, even a verbophile like me trembles in terror when he stands in their presence.

Because of these problematic aspects of "insidious" and "invidious", I've always been diffident about actually using either of them, although they superficially appear like precise, powerful, persuasive words (the kind I prefer to use when possible), for fear that I would use them incorrectly.

Usually, when I'm uncertain about the meaning of a word, I start to dig into its etymology, but so much in awe of the mutual resemblance of "insidious" and "invidious" am I that — up till now — I didn't dare attack their opaque etymology head on.  However, I've been so disquieted over "insidious" and "invidious" that I decided to confront this pair of demons directly.  As is my usual wont, I began my sally by aiming my lance at the "s" and the "v" of the two words, the only components that distinguish them, since I figured the decisive, core root of the terms would be identified by these two letters.  Right away, things got a bit easier and I became less terrified of the two expressions.

The "sid" of "insidious" reminds me of "sit" < sedeō (“to sit”), with the "in" implying "in, on", whereas the "vid" of "invidious" reminds me of videō (“I see”), the visual counterpart of audeō (“I hear”), with the "in" suggesting "upon; askance", cf. "envy", where the "-vy" part comes from the same "videre" ("see") as in "invidious".

Superficially, I consider "insidious" and "invidious" to be equally "difficult" words, yet the former yields 62,000,000 ghits, while the latter yields only 3,640,000.  I suspect that far fewer of those who try to use "invidious" as part of their usual vocabulary get it right than those who employ "insidious" in their daily lexicon.

Wanting to compare "insidious" and "invidious" with another "fancy" word of comparable length and shape, I checked the hit yield of "ubiquitous", which has ten letters and garners 126,000,000 ghits, more than twice as many as "insidious".  That doesn't bother me one bit, because it has a distinctive meaning and shape.  Moreover, it does not have a word that is in close competition with it in meaning and appearance.  Consequently, although "ubiquitous" looks fancy and difficult, it is not at all intimidating to me the way "insidious" and "invidious" are.

Where does that leave us?  Even with all of that etymological analysis, I still feel cautious about using "Insidious" and "invidious" correctly.  I will rely on mnemonic devices to differentiate them.

It seems like a waste of two good words to abandon them because they're hard to tell apart.

Insidious or invidious? Which word do you use and when?

They’re really easy to confuse – and not just because they sound similar, but because they both have negative connotations.

Here’s how to remember the difference – so you always pick the right word. 

  Let’s start with insidious – with an s.

Now you should use insidious when you want to describe something that has a gradual negative effect that perhaps isn’t that obvious. One that creeps up on you in a way.

So we might talk about a disease as being insidious. In that its progress may be gradual. 

Or here’s a couple of examples of the word insidious from the BBC website. 

“The trope of the "angry black woman" is an old, insidious stereotype”

In other words, it’s subtle form of racism. 

Similarly:

“Domestic abuse is not only physical but can be much more insidious”

In other words, the abuse may be hidden from outsiders and chip away secretly. So one way to remember insidious is to think of that s as a sort of slithering snake secretly sneaking up on you.

The etymology – that is the origin of the word ‘insidious’, can also help us understand and remember its meaning.

Ultimately, the word insidious comes from the latin “insidere" meaning to occupy – which itself comes from a combination of the prefix in- meaning ‘in’ and “sedere”– meaning sit. 

And you may be able to think of other words with the same roots. Like sedentary – a sedentary lifestyle is one where you’re sitting down a lot of the day. Or sedan, which might be a portable chair. 

So one way to remember the meaning of insidious is to picture something slow and sedentary, that’s waiting to pounce.

 

So what about invidious with a v? Well, like insidious with an s you’d use invidious with a v to describe something unpleasant. However, it doesn’t have the same connotations of something creeping up on you. Instead, it’s used of something that’s likely to cause unhappiness, offence or resentment.

For example, here’s another quote from the BBC: 

“medical staff had to make invidious choices between who they could treat and who they couldn't treat”

In other words, the staff were having to make unhappy or unfortunate choices that might cause resentment.

Similarly, a company might be described as having a “culture of invidious, opaque decision-making”.  

In other words, a culture where decisions may cause resentment or offence.

As with insidious, knowing the etymology or origin of the word invidious can help us remember its meaning.

Invidious comes from the latin word "invidia," meaning envy which in turn comes from the word “invidere”, meaning to look askance at or to envy.

So whereas insidious refers to something secret and unseen, invidious refers to something that is very much out in the open. People don’t just see it – they look askance at it.

So to remember the difference between insidious and invidious, think of the s in insidious as standing for something sneaky and secretive. And the v in invidious as something visible and viewable. 

Do that and you can’t go wrong.

Thanks to Clare Lynch of Doris and Bertie.

Sounds kind of silly for VHM to be afraid of two words, doesn't it?  But they really have troubled me for most of my life — even now after making an honest effort to master them, I still have a hangup about them.  Perhaps it's because I don't find them useful enough to apply them to reall-life situations.

Here are a few examples to exorcise these nemeses:

 

INSIDIOUS

• It was an insidious disease and the effects were noticed too late.
• Most people with this insidious disease have no idea that they are infected.
• 
  
• The first, and perhaps most insidious type of fear is in the sphere of our self.
  —
• Nell Derick Debevoise, Forbes, 27 Feb. 2021

 

• And the virus, as the Wall Street Journal put it, is insidious.
  —
• Andrew Mark Miller, Washington Examiner, 17 Nov. 2020

 

• This feeling is a form of self-doubt and one of the most insidious forms.
  —
• Kevin Kruse, Forbes, 4 Oct. 2024

 

• Even so, there are insidious flashes of wit to the way that M3GAN speaks.
  —
• Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 4 Jan. 2023

 

• The most insidious form of oppression is that which comes at the hands of your own.
  —
• Janice Gassam Asare, Forbes, 28 Jan. 2022

 

• The efforts were large and small, from the insidious to old-fashioned dirty tricks.
  —
• Washington Post, 17 Feb. 2018

 

• More insidious is moisture that opens the door to mildew.
  —
• Popmech Editors, Popular Mechanics, 21 Nov. 2019

 

• The story kind of starts to have this insidious effect on you.
  —
• Roxanne Fequiere, ELLE, 5 Dec. 2022

 

• That was what was so insidious about the process, Albury thought.
  —
• New York Times, 1 Sep. 2021

 

• In the calmest, most insidious way, Dorothy had been kidnapped.
  —
• Hadley Meares, Los Angeles Magazine, 7 June 2018

 

• With the insidious nature of this thing, any of us could fall victim.
  —
• Gordon Monson, The Salt Lake Tribune, 14 Sep. 2020

 

• Now the town is known for something much more insidious.
  —
• Ann Killion, SFChronicle.com, 3 Aug. 2019

 

• One of the most insidious parts of this, for me, has been that, on the days that are better, the physical relief cedes space to self-doubt.
  —
• Anna Altman, The New Republic, 17 Feb. 2021

 

• This recipe is more insidious because, Nadine points out, the ants walk all over it, then take it back to their nest.
  —
• Isabel Garcia, House Beautiful, 7 Feb. 2020

 

• The first is the ongoing insidious change to an ever-warmer world.
  —
• Jim Williams, Star Tribune, 16 Feb. 2021

 

• But this time, as one of the most racist and insidious laws ever created in this country was passed, the leagues slept.
  —
• Mike Freeman, USA TODAY, 29 Mar. 2021

 

• Eating ice would be just one of the many insidious symptoms that would take over my life throughout the next year.
  —
• L'oréal Blackett, refinery29.com, 19 Sep. 2024

 

• The twice-monthly mahjong game also fell victim to the insidious virus.
  —
• oregonlive, 9 June 2021

 

• But as many lives as this insidious virus has taken, and will take in the months to come, heart disease will inevitably take more.
  —
• Fortune, 17 Nov. 2020

 

• But there's a more subtle and insidious form of racist stereotyping that can be hard to pin down.
  —
• Kristen Rogers, CNN, 5 June 2020

 

• This insidious disease has touched every part of the globe.
  —
• Apoorva Mandavilli New York Times, Star Tribune, 6 Aug. 2020

 

• But the stories seemed to her more insidious and more familiar, too: The trope of the adulterous wife is as old as time.
  —
• Mattie Kahn, New York Times, 23 Mar. 2024

 

• Yet others thought that since most guys do the asking, this reinforced the norm of who pays in an insidious way.
  —
• Santul Nerkar, New York Times, 14 Feb. 2024

 

• Among the most insidious claims is that people won’t return to cities for years, if ever.
  —
• Peter Kern, Fortune, 15 Mar. 2021

 

• Even more insidious, the larva then forces its victim to drill a hole too small for its own escape.
  —
• Andrew Forbes, National Geographic, 25 Jan. 2017

 

• Second, and maybe even more insidious, is the mommy track thing.
  —
• Emily Peck, Fortune, 17 Nov. 2021

 

• But that does not make the anti-Asian hate speech online less insidious.
  —
• New York Times, 19 Mar. 2021

 

• While the postmortem and soul-searching are necessary, the tone and tenor of the blame game have begun to morph into something more insidious.
  —
• Anthony D. Romero, Twin Cities, 6 Dec. 2024

 

• One digital strategist at an independent record label worried that the problem could soon grow more insidious.
  —
• Liz Pelly, Harper's Magazine, 2 Jan. 2025

INVIDIOUS

The boss made invidious distinctions between employees.

• Those invidious assumptions are reflected these days all over TV and in the movies.
  —
• BostonGlobe.com, 22 Oct. 2021
   
• The more invidious reason to claim that people are born with certain traits is to avoid having to help people do any better.
  —
• Eugenia Cheng, Wired, 25 Aug. 2020
   
• Tech companies are increasingly facing the invidious choice of which side of the divide to be on.
  —
• The Economist, 20 June 2020
   
• The statement compared Israel’s border wall to the Berlin Wall and drew indirect but invidious analogies to apartheid, slavery and Nazism.
  —
• Barton Swaim, WSJ, 16 Dec. 2020
   
• Of course, comparisons to Davidson’s greatest hits are not just invidious but unfair to Ritchie.
  —
• Los Angeles Times, 10 June 2021
   
• Closer to home, the mechanisms of repression are less heavy-handed, but no less invidious in their intent.
  —
• Laura Beers, CNN, 6 May 2022
   
• Most Justices in Wygant seemed to consider racial bias to be less invidious in hiring than firing decisions.
  —
• The Editorial Board, WSJ, 17 Aug. 2022
   
• Again and again, the metaphor gets invoked by leading politicians, typically as a warning against a hidden, invidious threat.
  —
• Ben Zimmer, WSJ, 21 Aug. 2020
   
• And people are pretty good at seeing their own behavior in the best light and pretty bad at seeing an invidious pattern to their assumptions.
  —
• New York Times, 2 July 2019
   
• As to what happens next, the Australian government has put itself in an invidious position.
  —
• Tim Soutphommasane and Marc Stears, CNN, 12 Jan. 2022
   
• The Wirecard fraud has again brought to public attention the invidious negligence of some auditors.
  —
• Karthik Ramanna, Fortune, 11 July 2020
   
• Still others objected to the idea of a list in the first place, noting its intrinsically arbitrary and invidious nature.
  —
• New York Times, 22 June 2018
   
• Farewell to the debt collectors, the invidious bureaucrats, the endless frustrations.
  —
• David Grann, The New Yorker, 28 Feb. 2023
   
• Mr Trump’s behaviour forced on Congress an invidious choice.
  —
• The Economist, 12 Dec. 2019
   
• Doniger’s invidious contrast of the poetic quality of the work between its first and second books is as much a consequence of the text itself as of the poetic prowess of the translators and editors involved.
  —
• Wendy Doniger, The New York Review of Books, 7 Apr. 2022
   
• In many respects, Mr Trump has placed military leaders in an invidious position.
  —
• The Economist, 7 June 2020
   
• The 14th Amendment requires the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations.
  —
• Karl R. Bauman, The Seattle Times, 12 June 2017
   
• Because there is only one motive—to realize a maximum of benefit at a minimum of cost—those who do not flourish are losers in an invidious, Darwinian sense.
  —
• Marilynne Robinson, The New York Review of Books, 27 May 2020
   
• This fusion of racial grievance and post-racialism created a toxic brew, poisonous to the ongoing efforts to contest white supremacy and protective of the invidious status quo that the Voting Rights Act had tried to interrupt.
  —
• Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, The New Republic, 23 Oct. 2020
   
• Even this, however, failed to impress the invidious keepers of independent rock music.
  —
• M.t. Richards, Chicago Tribune, 19 Jan. 2023
   
• Even California’s liberal electorate signaled last month that crude and invidious affirmative action should remain a thing of the past.
  —
• Holman W. Jenkins, WSJ, 8 Dec. 2020
   
• His writing demystifies the world before us, dispelling the cloud created by the chaotic motivations and invidious narcissism of the market.
  —
• Tiana Reid, Vulture, 31 Aug. 2021
   
• Did Congress, in enacting Section 1182(f), authorize the President to deny entry to a class of aliens on the basis of invidious discrimination?
  —
• Garrett Epps, The Atlantic, 28 May 2017
   
• Laid bare, this executive order is no more than what the President promised before and after his election: naked invidious discrimination against Muslims.
  —
• Robert Barnes, Washington Post, 28 May 2017
   
• My study suggests chilling effects, due to online surveillance and other legal/regulatory threats, put all of these freedoms at risk in subtle and invidious ways while affecting certain people or groups more than others.
  —
• Jonathon W. Penney, Slate Magazine, 7 July 2017
   
• Monday’s ruling won’t open the floodgates to invidious discrimination as critics imagine.
  —
• Ryan T. Anderson, WSJ, 6 June 2018
   
• When Britain’s death toll from the virus first surpassed those of other European countries in May, Johnson argued that country-to-country comparisons were invidious because governments collect and analyze data differently.
  —
• BostonGlobe.com, 31 July 2020
   
• Considering painters and sculptors in groups generates invidious hierarchies—most innovative, most original—that can relegate accomplished but less than dazzling artists to the sidelines.
  —
• Karen Wilkin, WSJ, 3 Apr. 2018
   
• Infidels are by definition misguided and prone to ignorant, invidious ideas.
  —

Alas!  All that still hasn't cured my insidious-invidious affliction / angst.

 

Selected reading

• "Nest: a rare and perplexing surname" (4/15/24)
• "African (il)literacy" (6/21/21) — insidious
• "On New China Newspeak", China Heritage (1/9/18) — invidious

February 9, 2025 @ 4:47 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Etymology, Usage, Vocabulary

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