innocent: free from guilt or from a claim against you, and so not liable to be punished or held responsible.
At its heart this word says a person is clear of something that could be charged against them. It comes from a verb that means to be clean or empty, and the picture is of someone with nothing held against them: no guilt, no debt, no broken promise. The standard English word is innocent, but the idea is wider than our courtroom sense of the term. It can describe someone who has done no wrong, but it can equally describe someone who has been let off a duty or released from an oath they swore.
The word leans toward the legal side of life. Again and again it turns up where guilt, blame, and the right to punish are at stake: a witness testifying, a judge deciding, an avenger weighing whether a death may be repaid. The most charged use is the fixed phrase the Bible builds with it, innocent blood, meaning the life of a person who did nothing to deserve death. Shedding that blood is one of the gravest sins the prophets name, and the land itself is said to be stained by it.
The gentler side of the word covers being free or off the hook. A servant can be released from his oath, a soldier excused from going to war for a year, spies cleared of their promise if its terms are not met. In every case the same logic holds: whatever could have been required of the person is no longer owed.