Noun

(en noun)

a (usually female) street urchin; a homeless girl

a mischievous, playful, elfish, pert girl or young woman

Noun

(en noun)

An innocent, unsophisticated, , wholesome girl or young woman.

A dramatic role of such a woman; an actress playing such a role.

(rare) An innocent, unsophisticated, , wholesome person.

* {{quote-magazine, title=Acheson, Political Ingenue

, authorlink=Harold L. Ickes , last=Ickes , first=Harold L. , magazine=The New Republic , page=17 , date=11 June 1951 , volume=124 , issue=24 , pageurl=http://www.unz.org/Pub/NewRepublic-1951jun11-00017 }}

Mr. Acheson's failure as Secretary of State ... has been an inability to understand people or to be understood by them.

* {{quote-magazine, title=What Makes Lord Byron Go? Strong Determinations-Public/Private-of Imperial Errancy

, first=Joshua David , last=Gonsalves , magazine=Studies in Romanticism , volume=41 , issue=1, Psychoanalytic , year=2002 , month=Spring , page=40fn , pageurl=http://www.jstor.org/stable/25601543 }}

I cannot resist citing, slightly out of context, another bit of Baudelaire: "Satan s'est fait ingénu''" (Satan has made himself into an ingenue [''Oeuvres Completes 640]).

* {{quote-magazine, title=It's a Cue, the Name

, first=Kevin , last=McFadden , magazine=Poetry , page=417 , volume=188 , issue=5 , pageurl=http://www.jstor.org/stable/20607555 , month=September , year=2006 }}

America why callow ingenue bile?