INGENUITY • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Ingenuity

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/ɪndʒənˈuəti/ Listen

noun

Ingenuity n.

The quality or power of ready invention; quickness or acuteness in forming new combinations; ingeniousness; skill in devising or combining. "All the means which human ingenuity has contrived."

Curiousness, or cleverness in design or contrivance; as, the ingenuity of a plan, or of mechanism. "He gives... To artist ingenuity and skill."

Openness of heart; ingenuousness. (Obs.) "The stings and remorses of natural ingenuity, a principle that men scarcely ever shake off, as long as they carry anything of human nature about them."

Synonyms: Inventiveness; ingeniousness; skill; cunning; cleverness; genius. Ingenuity, Cleverness. Ingenuity is a form of genius, and cleverness of talent. The former implies invention, the letter a peculiar dexterity and readiness of execution. Sir James Mackintosh remarks that the English overdo in the use of the word clever and cleverness, applying them loosely to almost every form of intellectual ability.

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Etymology of 'Ingenuity'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Ingenuity" Quotes from Famous Books

... manufactures, not to Portugal, but to South America; while Portugal would be obliged to send the bullion to some other country that it might carry on a smuggling trade with its neighbour, Spain. It was impossible for the ingenuity of man to ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... confessor of princes is not commonly a difficult matter to compass: but in the present case, these two potent engines of command were found very incompatible. Mrs. Sedley, who possessed all the wit and ingenuity of her father, Sir Charles made the priests and their counsels the perpetual objects cf her raillery; and it is not to be doubted but they, on their part, redoubled their exhortations with their penitent to break off so criminal ...

— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... his room and earnestly gave himself up to the perusal of the writings Bessy Bell had given him. He experienced shocks of pain and wonder, between which he had to laugh. All the fiendish wit of youthful ingenuity flashed forth from this verse. There was a parody on Tennyson's "Break, Break, Break," featuring Colonel Pepper's famous and deplorable habit. Miss Hill came in for a great share of opprobrium. One verse, if it had ever come under the eyes ...

— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... exercise your ingenuity in a rational and contemplative manner.—No, I do not proscribe certain forms of philosophical speculation which involve an approach to the absurd or the ludicrous, such as you may find, for example, in the folio of the Reverend Father Thomas Sanchez, in his famous Disputations, "De ...

— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... offer, on the spur of the moment, the alternative explanation she demanded. Indeed it would have taken a good deal of ingenuity to construct one. It was safer, anyway, just ...

— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

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