Word of the Day

Saturday November 14, 2009

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ingenuous [in-JEN-yoo-uhs]

adjective

1. Simple; naive; innocent.
2. Free from reserve, disguise, or guile; open; frank.
3. [Obsolete] of noble birth or nature.

• Arguments for the public option are too feeble to seem ingenuous. The president says competition from a government plan is necessary to keep private insurers "honest." Presumably, being "honest" means not colluding to set prices, and evidently he thinks that, absent competition from government, there will not be a competitive market for insurance.
  George F. Will, "Taking a razor to the president's plan", Oakland Tribune, Jun 22, 2009
• There's something about Jimi Hendrix's confident grin -- so ingenuous and inviting -- that disarms the observer and plays against stereotype, as do so many of the images in "Hendrix Revealed," a new exhibit of Hendrix photographs that opened May 29 and will continue nearly a month, the largest display of them ever mounted in the U.S.
  Casey Dolan, "POP ART; A new Jimi experience", Los Angeles Times, Jun 8, 2008
• However, the men of New York, as they tell you with an insistent and ingenuous pride, are "hustlers." They must ever be moving, and moving fast. The "hustling," probably, leads to little enough. Haste and industry are not synonymous.
  Charles Whibley (1859 - 1930) An English literary journalist and author. American Sketches (1908)

Origin of the Word

Ingenuous, approximately 1598, derives from Latin ingenuus, "native, freeborn," from in- "in" + gen-, root of gignere "beget, produce."