ingenue
noun
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Although Becky Sharp, the ambitious heroine of William Makepeace Thackeray's 1848 novel Vanity Fair, is not usually thought of as innocent or naive, the author used ingenue to describe her as having those qualities. Thackeray's use was attributive: "When attacked sometimes, Becky had a knack of adopting a demure ingenue air, under which she was most dangerous." The word ingenue typically refers to someone who is innocent to the ways of the world, so you probably won't be too surprised to learn that it shares an ancestor—Latin ingenuus—with ingenuous, a word meaning "showing innocent or childlike simplicity and candidness." More directly, our ingenue comes from French ingénue, the feminine form of ingénu, meaning "ingenuous."
Examples of ingenue in a Sentence
Bethy Squires, Vulture, 14 Apr. 2024
Lea Thompson was the darling ingenue of the 1980s with her turns in classics such as Back to the Future (1985) and Some Kind of Wonderful (1987).
—Aja Hoggatt, EW.com, 29 May 2024
Her Hypatia, the spoiled ingenue turned rebel, is wild and wayward yet fighting a worthy fight.
—Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times, 23 May 2024
Hearing Swift sing about mistreated ingenues over shots of pretty girls all dressed in white anxiously hoping to be plucked out of the crowd by a worthy suitor, will leave you wondering how far society has actually come in 150 years.
—Shannon Carlin, TIME, 3 May 2024
See all Example Sentences for ingenue 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'ingenue.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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Cite this Entry
“Ingenue.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ingenue. Accessed 7 Jul. 2024.
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ingenue
noun
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