ingenue
/ˈɑnʒənu/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.13 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
3
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
An innocent, unsophisticated, naïve, wholesome girl or young woman.
noun
Misspelling of ingenu.
Example Sentences
- "Near-synonym: girl next door"
- "She was seen as a gifted pop-country ingenue when, in a now infamous moment, Kanye West interrupted Swift onstage at the 2009 VMAs while she was accepting an award. The incident set in motion a chain of events that would shape the next decade of both artists’ lives."
- "The intelligent and talented blonde who was fluent in English, French and Spanish was interested in art and joined a local theater group to work on set designs but wound up on stage playing an ingenue in Liliom and was spotted by director Vincente Minnelli."
- "Mr. Acheson's failure as Secretary of State ... has been an inability to understand people or to be understood by them."
- "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])"
- "America why callow ingenue bile?"
Etymology
Origin
- Source language: French
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈɑnʒənu/
- British English: /ˌænʒeɪˈnjuː/