disingenuous
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
- disingenuously adverb
- disingenuousness noun
- nondisingenuous adjective
- nondisingenuously adverb
- nondisingenuousness noun
Etymology
Origin of disingenuous
Explanation
Use the adjective disingenuous to describe behavior that's not totally honest or sincere. It's disingenuous when people pretend to know less about something than they really do. Disingenuous combines dis-, meaning "not," with ingenuous (from the Latin gen-, meaning "born") which was originally used to distinguish free-born Romans from slaves, and later came to mean "honest" or "straightforward." So disingenuous means "dishonest." Ingenuous is less common now than disingenuous, but we still use it for someone who is sincere to the point of naiveté. A good synonym is insincere.
Vocabulary lists containing disingenuous
100 SAT Words Beginning with "D"
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Grade 12, List 4
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This Week in Words: March 30–April 5, 2019
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“It would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn’t change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas. It does.”
From Barron's • Apr. 15, 2026
That’s not to say that the movie doesn’t have plenty of fascinating industry insider details to grab onto, or that it’s at all disingenuous, only that it lacks focus.
From Salon • Feb. 8, 2026
“When you’re going to have rulings producing these massive and permanent effects, it seems kind of disingenuous to label them as interim,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University.
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 28, 2025
That has some traction with some lawyers, although Salahuddin Ahmed, a Karachi-based lawyer in the Supreme Court, sees that argument as disingenuous.
From BBC • Nov. 14, 2025
So I’m not being disingenuous when I say that I feel your pain.
From "Americanized" by Sara Saedi
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
