Search the Dictionary

Of honorable extraction; freeborn; noble; as, ingenuous blood of birth.

In an ingenuous manner; openly; fairly; candidly; artlessly. Being required to explane himself, he ingeniously confessed. Ludlow.

The state or quality of being ingenuous; openness of heart; frankness.

Not noble; unbecoming true honor or dignity; mean; unworthy; as, disingenuous conduct or schemes.

art, craft, or stratagem; characterized by simplicity and sincerity; sincere; guileless; ingenuous; honest; as, an artless mind; an artless tale. They were plain, artless men, without the least appearance of enthusiasm or credulity about them. Porteus. O, how unlike the complex works of man, Heaven's easy, artless, un…

e young offender is ashamed to blush. Buckminster. He would stroke The head of modest and ingenuous worth, That blushed at its own praise. Cowper.

Open; frank; ingenuous; outspoken.

Disingenuousness. [Obs.] Clarendon.

Free in uttering one's real sentiments; not reserved; using no disguise; candid; ingenuous; as, a frank nature, conversation, manner, etc.

The quality of being frank; candor; openess; ingenuousness; fairness; liberality.

Unconstrained by timidity or distrust; unreserved; ingenuous; frank; familiar; communicative. He was free only with a few. Milward.

Indicating a lack of breeding, culture, and the like; ignoble; rude; narrow-minded; disingenuous.

An ingenuous or naïve girl or young woman, or an actress representing such a person.

Simplicity or plainness, bordering on weakness or silliness; artlessness; ingenuousness. Chaucer. Shak.

Not being in truth what one appears to be; not sincere; dissembling; hypocritical; disingenuous; deceitful; false; -- said of persons; also of speech, thought; etc.; as, insincere declarations.

Having native or unaffected simplicity; ingenuous; artless; frank; as, naïve manners; a naïve person; naïve and unsophisticated remarks.

Native simplicity; unaffected plainness or ingenuousness; artlessness. A story which pleases me by its naïveté -- that is, by its unconscious ingenuousness. De Quincey.

Not straightforward; indirect; obscure; hence, disingenuous; underhand; perverse; sinister. The love we bear our friends... Hath in it certain oblique ends. Drayton. This mode of oblique research, when a more direct one is denied, we find to be the only one in our power. De Quincey. Then would be closed the restless, o…

ck; as, to revolt the feelings. This abominable medley is made rather to revolt young and ingenuous minds. Burke. To derive delight from what inflicts pain on any sentient creatuure revolted his conscience and offended his reason. J. Morley.

e; food. It could be no ordinary declension of nature that could bring some men, after an ingenuous education, to place their "summum bonum" upon their trenchers. South. Trencher cap, the cap worn by studens at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, having a stiff, flat, square appendage at top. A similar cap used in the U…