Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Inventive skill or imagination; cleverness.
- n. Imaginative and clever design or construction: a narrative plot of great ingenuity.
- n. An ingenious or imaginative contrivance.
- n. Obsolete Ingenuousness.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Ingenuousness; frankness; openness of heart.
- n. The quality of being ingenious; inventive capacity or faculty; aptness in contrivance or combination, as of things or ideas; skill; cleverness: as, ingenuity displayed in the construction of machines, or of arguments or plots.
- n. Ingenious contrivance; skilfulness of design, construction, or execution: as, the ingenuity of a machine; the ingenuity of a puzzle or a poem. Synonyms Abilities, Cleverness, etc. (see
genius ); inventiveness, turn, knack, smartness.
Wiktionary
- n. The ability to solve difficult problems, often in original and creative ways
- n. Ingenuousness; honesty, straightforwardness.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The quality or power of ready invention; quickness or acuteness in forming new combinations; ingeniousness; skill in devising or combining.
- n. Curiousness, or cleverness in design or contrivance.
- n. obsolete Openness of heart; ingenuousness.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the property of being ingenious
- n. the power of creative imagination
Etymologies
- From Latin ingenuitās. (Wiktionary)
- Latin ingenuitās, frankness (influenced by ingenious), from ingenuus, ingenuous; see ingenuous. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
““The crucial test for the solution of all these intricate problems which confront and challenge our ingenuity is the sheer and forceful application of those immutable laws which down the corridor of time have always guided the hand of man, groping as it were for some faint beacon of light for his hopes and aspirations.””
McCain and Obama Court Hispanic Voters - The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com
“Human ingenuity is not infinite; we just do not know its bounds.”
Learning from Lomborg, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“I don't know if human ingenuity is infinite or not.”
Learning from Lomborg, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“I guess that sort of clean-slate ingenuity is something else America has claimed for itself as time goes on; no wonder Pyotr Ilyich is a perennial honored guest.”
“Tim is also a believer in American ingenuity and knows that products like Patch will help deliver a commercially viable way for communities to support the important work of local journalists, institutions, governments, and businesses.”
“The combination of science and human ingenuity is an unbelievably powerful thing.”
“This ingenuity is matched by Reynolds 'performance; carrying a ninety minute movie solo is no easy task, but he depicts a range of emotions from rage to terror to joy with believable aplomb.”
The Huffington Post: Farihah Zaman: 2010 Fantastic Fest #2: Good Movies, Stupid Plots
“Kudos to Kellogg - this initiative shows a wonderful degree of ingenuity from the company in terms of reducing packaging costs and environmental impact as well as better meeting the needs of retailers and consumers at the same time.”
“Calling attention to surface ingenuity is a feature of young styles, of the brand-new; the subjugation of that ingenuity to the overall artistic intent is a feature of mature styles — the possibilities have been explored, now it's time to think about why more than how.”
“Therefore, by reason of consistency, you must concede that the fact that human ingenuity is required to explain the causal origins of computers does not mean computers are not likewise bona fide intelligent agents. aiguy, you are arguing with yourself.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘ingenuity’.
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Visuals
A list of words which yield surprising, beautiful, amusing, or otherwise noteworthy images here on Wordnik.
photochrom, fufluns, thank you, cool l..., postcard, picture postcard, cricket, physiological ill..., Gakuryū Ishii, ametropia, One Froggy Evening, rhodopsin, Santiago Calatrava and 636 more...
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Words related to knowledge
Words that relate to learning, knowing, being enlightened...
revelation, eureka, awakening, idea, sapient, astute, canny, intelligent, wise, sharp, shrewd, informed and 467 more...
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gre
municipal, whit, dissembler, berate, liberally, embellish, dissimilitude, histrionics, flamboyance, bombastic, bovine, calumny and 142 more...
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AFET - diplomacy
broker a peace ac..., client state, deadlocked peace ..., embassy, freeze, goodwill ambassador, hinterland, interfere in dome..., intervene personally, maintain technica..., mediation, no business as usual and 670 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6689 more...
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The condom-free preserve
Italian-English false friends.
One a day, maybe even less.
Contributors: Prolagus, bilbypreservative, engross, camera, janitor, dent, fastidious, morbid, crude, juvenile, bald, confetti, pollution and 29 more...
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Dream Words
phantasmagoria, illusion, imagination, ingenuity, slumber, bliss, airy, clouds, star, sky, moon, cloud nine and 2 more...
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My GRE Vocab
moniker, sobriquet, prerogative, aberration, aberrant, nuance, notorious, infamous, content, refer, allude, renown and 109 more...
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five syllables
ontogenesis, phylogenesis, concatenation, androgenesis, extra textual, inexorably, spagyrically, apophenia, iatrochemist, monocotyloid, morphological, parthenogenic and 941 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, I
irenic, inimical, ignotism, infrangible, internecine, illumine, ingot, imposter, iconoclast, indefeasible, indefatigable, impingement and 184 more...
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Writing
immunity, reaching, affinity, divinity, ingenuity, linguistics, pictures, kaleidoscopes, statistics, hope, monolith, mist and 222 more...
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reginaterra's Words
purl, blow, squish, andean, generality, adaptation, lush, pack, filter, acquiesce, abstraction, sweet and 508 more...
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Clarissa, Or, The History of a Young ...
These words are from Samuel Richardson's novel Clarissa, Or, The History of a Young Lady, 1747-48
adumbrate, virago, varlet, rencounter, akimbo, palliate, amanuensis, amok, equipage, cully, se'ennight, resentments and 560 more...
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Personal Vocabulary List
All my favourite words that I come across!
veritable, incongruence, rigamorole, letcherous, revolting, repulsive, reputrid, rapatious, forays, guise, placate, paradigm and 1162 more...
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Cessilind's Words
dvorak, ingenuity, cessation, oblique, transverse, anvilicious, evoke, verisimilitude, integrity, strega, recumbent, depression and 164 more...
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everythingecstatic's Words
cadence, frenetic, eloquence, paradigm, nocturne, elusive, effervescence, soliloquy, plethora, elision, aqueous, transcend and 166 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for ingenuity.
sionnach Prolagus is just playing a belated April fool's joke on us. Nothing he, or anyone, can say can convince me that ingegnosità is an actual word. It looks like the kind of furball a cat might throw up on one's freshly carpeted apartment. Apr 3, 2011
Prolagus In Italian, ingenuità means ingenousness. ingenuity is ingegnosità. Apr 3, 2011
minerva Obsolete: ingenuousness. Dec 19, 2007