Word.ws English Dictionary

naivete

naivete is the alternative spelling 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

Questions about naivete

What is naivete the alternative spelling of?
Naivete is the alternative spelling of naïveté.

Words near naivete in the dictionary

  1. naively
  2. naiveness
  3. naiver
  4. naives
  5. naivest
  6. naivete
  7. naivetes
  8. naiveties
  9. naivety
  10. naiveté
  11. naivetés

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: naivete (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)-Wodencafe-naivete.wav.

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