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Ingenuous vs Ingenue - What's the difference?

ingenuous | ingenue | Related terms |

Ingenue is a related term of ingenuous.



As an adjective ingenuous

is naive and trusting.

As a noun ingenue is

an innocent, unsophisticated, naïve, wholesome girl or young woman.

ingenuous

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Naive and trusting.
  • Demonstrating childlike simplicity.
  • * 1919 ,
    • "Do you mean to say you didn't leave your wife for another woman?"
    "Of course not."
    "On your word of honour?"
    I don't know why I asked for that. It was very ingenuous of me.
  • Unsophisticated; simple.
  • Unable to mask one's feelings.
  • Straightforward, candid, open, and frank.

    • Synonyms

    * See also

    Antonyms

    * disingenuous

    Usage notes

    Do not confuse with ingenious.

    ingenue

    English

    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?

    Usage notes

    The corresponding masculine term, ingenu, is poorly known, and so the feminine term is sometimes used in a gender-neutral or masculine way. (See the 2002 citation, where the explicit masculine French is feminized in English.) But usually used more in a feminine context.

    Antonyms

    *femme fatale

    Related terms

    * ingenu, ingenuous

    Anagrams

    * * ----