Disingenuous vs Ingenuity - What's the difference?
disingenuous | ingenuity |
Not noble; unbecoming true honor or dignity; mean; unworthy; fake or deceptive.
Not ingenuous; not frank or open; uncandid; unworthily or meanly artful.
* 1726 , , The Poems of Alexander Pope: The Odyssey of Homer. Books XIII-XXIV , edited by Maynard Mack, Methuen, 1969, volume 10, page 378:
Assuming a pose of naivete to make a point or for deception.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2012-03
, author=William E. Carter, Merri Sue Carter
, title=The British Longitude Act Reconsidered
, volume=100, issue=2, page=87
, magazine=
The ability to solve difficult problems, often in original, clever, and inventive ways.
Ingenuousness; honesty, straightforwardness.
*, II.17:
As an adjective disingenuous
is not noble; unbecoming true honor or dignity; mean; unworthy; fake or deceptive.As a noun ingenuity is
the ability to solve difficult problems, often in original, clever, and inventive ways.disingenuous
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- I am not so vain as to think these Remarks free from faults, nor so disingenuous as not to confess them:
citation, passage=But was it responsible governance to pass the Longitude Act without other efforts to protect British seamen? Or might it have been subterfuge—a disingenuous attempt to shift attention away from the realities of their life at sea.}}
Usage notes
* Nouns to which "disingenuous" is often applied: attempt, argument, statement, conduct, people, excuse, question, assertion.Derived terms
* disingenuously * disingenuousnessExternal links
* * *ingenuity
English
Noun
(en-noun)- The pyramids demonstrate the ingenuity of the ancient Egyptians.
- Poverty is the mother of ingenuity .
- Ingenuity is one of the characteristics of a beaver.
- And therefore I apply my selfe to ingenuitie , and ever to speake truth and what I think.
