INVIDIOUS
adjective | in-VID-ee-us
What It Means
Invidious is a formal word used to describe things that are unpleasant and likely to cause bad feelings in other people. Such bad feelings may include resentment, discontent, animosity, or envy.
// Psychologists caution against drawing invidious comparisons between other people’s lives as portrayed on social media and one’s own.
Invidious in Context
“The gap between romantic expectation and mundane reality, frankly, never ceases to amaze with this team. France, somehow, get better, on paper, with every tournament. Talent keeps coming through at a relentless, invidious rate.” — James Horncastle, The New York Times, 16 June 2026.
Did You Know?
If invidious reminds you of the word insidious (“gradually or subtly causing harm”), you’ve got a nose for negativity—at least the lexical kind. It’s not that using the word invidious will harm you gradually, but that both words, in addition to rhyming and coming from Latin, are all about bad vibes. The two are otherwise unrelated; insidious comes from Latin insidiae, “ambush,” while invidious is instead a relative of envy and comes from the verb invidēre, meaning “to look askance at” or “to envy.” The link between envy and invidious is largely invisible today, as invidious is typically applied to that which is unpleasant (such as “an invidious position”) or is likely to cause harm or resentment (“invidious comparisons,” “invidious discrimination”).
Merriam Webster Dictionary
