Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
Wiktionary
- n. The condition of being ingenuous
GNU Webster's 1913
WordNet 3.0
- n. the quality of innocent naivete
- n. openly straightforward or frank
Examples
“There is a certain ingenuousness to a passage like this (although the novel does not stick exlusively to Famke's implied point of view), but ultimately it works as much to expose the pretensions of Albert Castle ( "Albert seemed very fond of caves") as the "simplicity" of Famke's perceptions.”
“He owns, therefore, what it would be to no purpose to conceal; and his ingenuousness is a salvo — ‘Why, this, Madam, is no more than Mr. Lovelace himself acknowledges.’”
“You use an imaginary helplessness with the brutality of a buccaneer, and your ingenuousness is a pistol you put to one's head, crying: your money or your life.”
“He owns, therefore, what it would be to no purpose to conceal; and his ingenuousness is a salvo -- 'Why, this, Madam, is no more than Mr. Lovelace himself acknowledges.”
“His ingenuousness is the thing that staggers me: yet is he cunning enough to know, that whoever accuses him first, blunts the edge of an adversary's accusation.”
“Today I wonder how much of this debate I will remember years from now, and wonder if it won't be the moment in which Rashid Khalidi gave Dennis Ross his microphone because Ross's had failed, and then Ross said a little too smoothly he always tried to empower Palestinians, and Khalidi said, with a kind of ingenuousness, "I would give you the shirt off my back, but it's too small.”
“Combined with dimples, the same coppery hair and willowy figure as her daughter, and a radiant smile, they gave her a kind of ingenuousness that even six decades or so of living had failed to erase.”
“His ingenuousness is the thing that staggers me: yet is he cunning enough to know, that whoever accuses him first, blunts the edge of an adversary’s accusation.”
“Simplicity is a childlike ingenuousness which is encountered when it is not expected; and it is for this very reason that, taking the word in its strictest sense, simplicity could not be attributed to childhood properly speaking.”
“On the contrary, a nation not yet entirely civilized, may have in its Ian - guage a kind of ingenuousness which renders expressions far from being entirely chaste; and I should be inclined to think that these modes of expression, shocking to the decen - cy of other nations, would disappear were a more refined civilization, more precautions in the education of young persons, almost exclusively abandoned to the government of servaiUs, even in the most distinguished houses, and especially were a better example, adopted.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘ingenuousness’.
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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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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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minerva Obsolete: ingenious. Dec 19, 2007