INGENUOUS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does ingenuous mean? 

• INGENUOUS (adjective)
  The adjective INGENUOUS has 2 senses:

1. characterized by an inability to mask your feelings; not devious

2. lacking in sophistication or worldliness

  Familiarity information: INGENUOUS used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• INGENUOUS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Characterized by an inability to mask your feelings; not devious

Synonyms:

artless; ingenuous

Context example:

an ingenuous admission of responsibility

Similar:

candid; heart-to-heart; open (openly straightforward and direct without reserve or secretiveness)

undistorted (without alteration or misrepresentation)

Also:

sincere (open and genuine; not deceitful)

naif; naive (marked by or showing unaffected simplicity and lack of guile or worldly experience)

Antonym:

disingenuous (not straightforward or candid; giving a false appearance of frankness)

Derivation:

ingenuousness (openly straightforward or frank)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Lacking in sophistication or worldliness

Synonyms:

ingenuous; innocent

Context example:

his ingenuous explanation that he would not have burned the church if he had not thought the bishop was in it

Similar:

naif; naive (marked by or showing unaffected simplicity and lack of guile or worldly experience)

Derivation:

ingenuousness (the quality of innocent naivete)

 Context examples 

I was ingenuous and young, and I thought so.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

She was hasty, but good-humoured; vain (she could not help it, when every glance in the glass showed her such a flush of loveliness), but not affected; liberal-handed; innocent of the pride of wealth; ingenuous; sufficiently intelligent; gay, lively, and unthinking: she was very charming, in short, even to a cool observer of her own sex like me; but she was not profoundly interesting or thoroughly impressive.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

He saw, I suppose, that I could not help smiling at the simplicity of this reply; and added, with a smile upon his own ingenuous face: Not, of course, but that my Sophy—pretty name, Copperfield, I always think?

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)