Dictionary.com

Word of the Day Archive
Thursday February 13, 2003

ingenue \AN-zhuh-noo\, noun:
1. A naive girl or young woman.
2. An actress playing such a person; also: the stage role of an ingenue.

This is not the face of an ingenue; this is an old soul in a new body -- wary, wise to her own long past, on to the wiles of the world, and having miles to go before she sleeps.
-- Sarah Ban Breathnach, Something More

Her passages -- from ingenue to royal bride to young mother to estranged wife to independent-minded divorcee -- attracted a global audience and made Diana the world's most famed and photographed woman.
-- Eugene Robinson, "From Sheltered Life to Palace Life, To a Life of Her Own", Washington Post, September 1, 1997

Ingenue comes from the French, from Latin ingenuus, "freeborn; worthy of a free man; hence honorable, frank; tender, delicate."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for ingenue

 

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