Word.ws English Dictionary

naiveness

naiveness is the rare form of naïveté.

Meaning of naïveté

Noun

naïveté (countable and uncountable, plural naïvetés)

  1. Lack of sophistication, experience, judgement or worldliness; artlessness; gullibility; credulity.
    • “You see, I do not know how to pick out any particular part of the diary.” Even while he was speaking an idea dawned upon him, and he said with unconscious simplicity, in a different voice, and with the naïveté of a child: “That’s quite true, upon my honour. Honest Indian!”1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula
    Synonyms:
    naiveness, naivety

Forms of naiveness

alternative formnaïfness
alternative formnaïveness

Origin of naiveness

From naive + -ness.

Questions about naiveness

What is naiveness the rare form of?
Naiveness is the rare form of naïveté.

Words near naiveness in the dictionary

  1. naive
  2. naive falsificationism
  3. naive realist
  4. naive realists
  5. naively
  6. naiveness
  7. naiver
  8. naives
  9. naivest
  10. naivete
  11. naivetes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: naiveness (page history and authors); naïveté (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-naiveness.wav.

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