Word.ws English Dictionary

ingénu

ingénu is the alternative spelling of ingenu.

Meaning of ingenu

Noun

ingenu (plural ingenus)

  1. (rare) An innocent, unsophisticated, naive, wholesome boy or young man.
    • Even a casual reader of the philosophic tale will have met, in the array of types on parade-an oft-repeated "naïf" (who was anything but naive), at least one famed "candide," and several "ingénus."1946 September, Dorothy M. McGhee, “The Conte Philosphique Evolves Its Solitaire”, in PMLA, volume 61, number 3, page 752
    Antonyms:
    homme fatal

Forms of ingénu

pluralingénus

Questions about ingénu

What is ingénu the alternative spelling of?
Ingénu is the alternative spelling of ingenu.

Words near ingénu in the dictionary

  1. Ingushetia
  2. Ingushetian
  3. Ingushetians
  4. ingustable
  5. Ingvaeonic
  6. ingénu
  7. ingénue
  8. ingénues
  9. ingénus
  10. INH
  11. inhab.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ingénu (page history and authors); ingenu (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “ingénu.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ing%C3%A9nu. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.