Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Lacking worldly experience and understanding, especially:
- adj. Simple and guileless; artless: a child with a naive charm.
- adj. Unsuspecting or credulous: "Students, often bright but naive, bet—and lose—substantial sums of money on sporting events” ( Tim Layden).
- adj. Showing or characterized by a lack of sophistication and critical judgment: "this extravagance of metaphors, with its naive bombast” ( H.L. Mencken).
- adj. Not previously subjected to experiments: testing naive mice.
- adj. Not having previously taken or received a particular drug: persons naive to marijuana.
- n. One who is artless, credulous, or uncritical.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Simple; unsophisticated; ingenuous; artless.
- In philosophy, unreflective; uncritical. Naïve thought is characterized by making deductions from propositions never consciously asserted.
Wiktionary
- adj. Lacking experience, wisdom, or judgement.
- adj. of art Produced in a simple, childlike style, deliberately rejecting sophisticated techniques.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Having native or unaffected simplicity; ingenuous; artless; frank.
- adj. Having a lack of knowledge, judgment, or experience; especially, lacking sophistication in judging the motives of others; credulous.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. lacking information or instruction
- adj. marked by or showing unaffected simplicity and lack of guile or worldly experience
- adj. inexperienced.
- adj. not initiated; deficient in relevant experience
- adj. of or created by one without formal training; simple or naive in style
Etymologies
- From French naïve, from Latin nativus ("native, natural"). (Wiktionary)
- French naïve, feminine of naïf, from Old French naif, natural, native, from Latin nātīvus, native, rustic, from nātus, past participle of nāscī, to be born. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Once it's here, it's spreading like a virus that's going into what we call a naive population.”
“At a news conference today with the visiting president of Afghanistan, Mr. Bush attacked what he called a naive conclusion drawn from a major government report on the war on terror.”
“At a news conference today with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Mr. Bush took aim at what he called a naive conclusion and a political leak.”
“He directed his ire at Hansen who had used the word "naive" in his assessment of the game in Monday's newspaper.”
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph
“I also reject what I call the naive Austrian view, which is that the only information problem that markets cannot solve is that of seeing through the distortions caused by government money.”
“While I'm more than a little nervous that "naive" is code for "adorkably clumsy," I'm crossing my fingers that the agent Bynes replaced us with knows what he or she is doing.”
“(on camera): He says the U.S. should reject what he calls the naive and flawed thinking that by sitting down with terrorist groups and their sponsors like Iran, they'll stop being threats.”
“There's lots of highly sohpisticated people here and on our city council, and in fact, being naive is a virtue; we're not so cynical.”
Seattle Cops Must Earn Our Respect. And They’re Not. « PubliCola
“Now and then, rubbing his eyes vigorously, an editor catches a sudden glimpse of the revolution and breaks out in naive volubility, as, for instance, the one who wrote the following in the Chicago Chronicle: American socialists are revolutionists.”
“Perhaps ignorant, or naive, is a better description.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘naive’.
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GRE 2014
abate, abdicate, abase, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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henryar's list
marmoleum, menagerie, cyan, ochre, pilfer, discombobulate, loquacious, iridescent, amethyst, derelict, botulism, equilibrium and 240 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Open List: Greens
A lits of greens: cooked leafy vegetables; pigments, paint names, compound words, etc; words and phrases that pertain to or contain "green". Please add your favorites!
See this list f...greenery, collard greens, mustard greens, turnip greens, green shoots, viridian green, malachite green, sap green, green grocer, radish greens, beet greens, spring green and 282 more...
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N
letters starting with n
nadir, naive, narcissist, nascent, natation, natty, nauseate, nautical, nebulous, necromancy, nefarious, negate and 24 more...
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14
Allege, conclusive, counterpart, dismal, enthrall, exotic, incredulous, legendary, lurk, menagerie, naive, pander and 3 more...
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14
allege, conclusive, counterpart, dismal, enthrall, exotic, incredulous, legendary, lurk, menagerie, naive, pander and 3 more...
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Character Traits
This is a list of adjectives used by writers to help develop characters.
guileful, obsessed, brilliant, bright, naive, streetwise, streetsmart, ruthless, cruel, foolish, obsessive, introspective and 19 more...
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Random Words
lochia, confused, innoxious, naive, cockatrice, derisive, parsley, passive, casual, football, innuendo, Rumanian and 172 more...
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africasunsets's list
serendipity, fragrance, glamour, smitten, nourish, lavish, luxury, wicked, gem, daring, soothe, fantasy and 192 more...
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My Words
Words that I use regularly and consider mine.
zen, poser, savvy, angst, flustered, bitter, whatsoever, farfetched, indeed, scenario, inevitable, salvage and 134 more...
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amy's GRE 2012
gimmicks, kowtow, unpretentious, skeptical, cynical, somber, prevaricate, equivocate, requisite, embellish, impregnable, procrastinate and 307 more...
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my dictionary
able, abnormally, abroad, absent, abstract, acceptable, acceptance, access, accessible, accession, according to, account and 4551 more...
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describe me
charming, afectionate, addictive, selfless, patience, drastic, fond, light-heeled, fragrant, delicate, care-free, natural and 95 more...
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GRE
juncture, keen, kindle, kinetic, knell, kudos, lament, lampoon, languid, lapidary, larceny, largess and 228 more...
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words that describe me
periphrastic, equivocal, doldrums, weird, labyrinthine, logophile, naive
Tweets
Looking for tweets for naive.
fbharjo A primo of mine wrote in his high school's yearbook a legacy: "I leave naive."
Nov 13, 2010
oroboros Evian in reverse. Jul 22, 2007