WORD OF THE DAY
Something ingenious shows creativity and inventiveness. If someone compares you to Einstein, they're implying that you, too, are ingenious.
Ingenious comes from the Latin words for inborn talent. It started off meaning someone who was talented or incredibly smart, but has come to mean "inventive" or "clever." If you could calculate how long a given water supply would last during a drought in your head, people might call you a math genius. But if you can come up with a solution to solve all water shortage issues during a drought, you will be praised as ingenious. Ingenious can also describe an object, like an ingenious device.
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Commonly confused words with ingenious
ingenious / ingenuous
Anything ingenious is smart and clever, but ingenuous means innocent and naive. The ingenious villain in your favorite comic book series might come up with diabolical plots, while the ingenuous heroine doesn't suspect a thing.
read moreVocabulary lists containing ingenious
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