SYNONYMS AND RELATED EXPRESSIONS
ingenuous
adjective
Innocent, candid, and free from artifice, sometimes naively so.
Local English device voice, when available. This is not a recorded dictionary pronunciation.
Candid and artless
Closest synonyms
Related words and expressions
These extend or explain the idea and may require a different sentence structure.
Usage distinction
Return to topIngenuous describes openness or innocence. Ingenious means clever and inventive and is a different word.
CHECK THE MEANING IN CONTEXT
See ingenuous in use
Her ingenuous question revealed a problem the experts had overlooked.
During a photography workshop, Celia gave a forthright account of why her proposed exhibition had been delayed: she had missed the venue's submission deadline. A new participant asked an ingenuous question about why she had not simply requested another date, unaware of the limits on the booking calendar.
Compare an alternative with the original word in each passage. Shared meanings do not make every pair interchangeable.
Synonym reference scope and sources
The groups distinguish the senses selected for this study entry. Closest synonyms and broader related expressions have separate labels. The listed sources support lexical selection; not every phrase is a direct quotation from a source.
How the synonym reference was prepared / WordNet 3.0 license