Word.ws English Dictionary

ingenue

UK/ˌænʒeɪˈnjuː//ˈɑnʒənu/

ingenue noun: an innocent, unsophisticated, naïve, wholesome girl or young woman. Also the misspelling of ingenu.

Noun

ingenue (plural ingenues)

  1. An innocent, unsophisticated, naïve, wholesome girl or young woman.
    • 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.2023 December 6, Sam Lansky, “Person of Year 2023 : Taylor Swift”, in Time, archived from the original on 06 Dec 2023
    Synonyms:
    girl next door
  2. A dramatic role of such a woman; an actress playing such a role.
    • 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.2012, Thomas Lisanti, Hollywood Surf and Beach Movies: The First Wave, 1959-1969, McFarland, →ISBN, page 396

Also used as

ingenue is also the misspelling of ingenu.

Synonyms of ingenue

Antonyms

1 more antonymsFewer antonyms

Forms of ingenue

pluralingenues
alternative formingénue

Origin of ingenue

Borrowed from French ingénue, the feminine form of ingénu (“guileless”), originally from the Latin ingenuus (“ingenuous”).

Words formed from ingenue

Questions about ingenue

What does ingenue mean?
Ingenue means an innocent, unsophisticated, naïve, wholesome girl or young woman.
What part of speech is ingenue?
Ingenue is a noun.
How do you pronounce ingenue?
Ingenue is pronounced /ˈɑnʒənu/ (US).
What is the plural of ingenue?
The plural of ingenue is ingenues.

Words near ingenue in the dictionary

  1. Ingenitos
  2. ingenius
  3. ingenol
  4. ingenols
  5. ingenu
  6. ingenue
  7. ingenues
  8. ingenui
  9. ingenuine
  10. ingenuities
  11. ingenuitive

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ingenue (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-ingenue.ogg.

Cite this entry: “ingenue.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ingenue. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.