Noun

(en-noun)

The ability to solve difficult problems, often in original, clever, and inventive ways.

The pyramids demonstrate the ingenuity of the ancient Egyptians.

Poverty is the mother of ingenuity .

Ingenuity is one of the characteristics of a beaver.

Ingenuousness; honesty, straightforwardness.

*, II.17:

And therefore I apply my selfe to ingenuitie , and ever to speake truth and what I think.

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?