Word of the Day

: June 21, 2015

ingenuous

adjective in-JEN-yuh-wus

What It Means

1 : showing innocent or childlike simplicity and candidness

2 : lacking craft or subtlety

ingenuous in Context

The salesman had perfected the art of winning over potential buyers by playing the part of a folksy, ingenuous bumpkin who is just looking out for his customers.

"Wearing his yellow tights and green tunic with pride, a gangling James Moye portrays Buddy as an endearing, mildly anxious man-child with an ingenuous personality and a wide smile." - Michael Sommers, New York Times, December 14, 2014

Did You Know?

Today, the words ingenuous and ingenious have distinct meanings and are not used interchangeably, but that wasn't always the case. For many years, the two words were used as synonyms. Ingenious has always had the fundamental meaning of "clever," and ingenuous has been most often used to suggest frankness and openness (owing either to good character or, now more often, innocence), but there was a time when ingenious could also mean "frank" and ingenuous could mean "clever." The publication in 1755 of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, in which these synonymous uses are not recognized, may have had something to do with establishing ingenious and ingenuous as distinct words. In any case, they appear to have ceased being used as synonyms by about 1800.