11 December 2014

ingenuous

[in-jen-yoo-uh s]

adjective
1. free from reserve, restraint, or dissimulation; candid; sincere.
2. artless; innocent; naive.
3. Obsolete. honorable or noble.

Origin
Latin
1590-1600; < Latin ingenuus native, free-born, honorable, frank, equivalent to in- in-2+ gen- (base of gignere; see ingenious ) + -uus deverbal adj. suffix; see -ous

Related forms
ingenuously, adverb
ingenuousness, noun
half-ingenuous, adjective
half-ingenuously, adverb
half-ingenuousness, noun

Can be confused
ingenious, ingenuous (see usage note at ingenious )

Synonyms
1. frank, straightforward, open. 2. guileless.

Usage note
See ingenious.

Dictionary.com

Examples from the web for ingenuous
– The claim is perhaps cagily ingenuous, by a writer often accused of being too cerebral and cool-hearted.
– Many actors could have been too winsome or ingenuous in the part of such a professional good guy.
– It is impossible not to accept it in the ingenuous spirit in which it was fabricated.

Anagram

ennui go use
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Today’s aphorism

If the rabble continues to occupy itself with you, then simply don’t read that hogwash, but rather leave it to the reptile for whom it has been fabricated.

– Albert Einstein

On this day

11 December 1941 – Hitler and Mussolini declare war on the United States. The USA responds in kind.

11 December 1946 – establishment of UNICEF (United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund) to provide food and healthcare to children in countries devastated by World War II.

11 December 1918 – birthday of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russian dissident writer, ‘The Gulag Archipelago‘, ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich‘, ‘The First Circle‘.

11 December 1961 – America’s first direct involvement in the Vietnam civil war, when a US aircraft carrier arrives in Saigon.

11 December 1975 – The Cod War in Iceland continues when an Iceland gun boat fires on unarmed British fishing vessels. Iceland had expanded its fishing zone from 50nm to 200nm from its coast.

11 December 1979 – The Rhodesian government returns power of the country to Great Britain until democratic elections are held. Following the elections, Rhodesia is renamed Zimbabwe.

11 December 1997 – The Kyoto Protocol is agreed to by 150 countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to combat anthropogenic global warming.