ingenious
English edit
Alternative forms edit
Etymology edit
Borrowed from Middle French ingénieux, from Old French engenious, from Latin ingeniōsus (“endowed with good natural capacity, gifted with genius”), from ingenium (“innate or natural quality, natural capacity, genius”), from in- (“in”) + gignere (“to produce”), Old Latin genere. See also engine.
Pronunciation edit
Adjective edit
ingenious (comparative more ingenious, superlative most ingenious)
- (of a person) Displaying genius or brilliance; inventive.
- Synonyms: see Thesaurus:intelligent
- This fellow is ingenious; he fixed a problem I didn’t even know I had.
- (of a thing) Characterized by genius; cleverly contrived or done.
- Synonym: artful
- That is an ingenious model of the atom.
- 1928, W[illiam] B[utler] Yeats, “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen”, in The Tower, page 32:
- Many ingenious lovely things are gone / That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude, / protected from the circle of the moon / That pitches common things about.
- Showing originality or sagacity; witty.
- Synonyms: adroit, keen, sagacious, shrewd; see also Thesaurus:witty
- He sent me an ingenious reply to an email.
- 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XIV, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 147:
- I have scarcely recovered the surprise of the ingenious question, before I meet another surprise in the still more ingenious answer
Usage notes edit
Not to be confused with ingenuous.
Related terms edit
Translations edit
displaying genius or brilliance; tending to invent
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characterized by genius; cleverly done or contrived
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witty; original; shrewd; adroit; keen; sagacious
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
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References edit
- “ingenious”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
- “ingenious”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.