ingenuity
Americannoun
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ingenuities
plural
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the quality of being cleverly inventive or resourceful; inventiveness.
a designer of great ingenuity.
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cleverness or skillfulness of conception or design.
a device of great ingenuity.
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an ingenious contrivance or device.
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Obsolete. ingenuousness.
noun
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inventive talent; cleverness
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an ingenious device, act, etc
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archaic frankness; candour
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of ingenuity
First recorded in 1590–1600; from Latin ingenuitās “innate virtue, etc.” ( see ingenuous, -ity); current senses by association with ingenious
Explanation
Ingenuity is the ability to think creatively about a situation or to solve problems in a clever way. If you want to build a boat out of toothpicks and yarn, you’ll need a lot of ingenuity. The Latin word for “mind, intellect” is a root of ingenuity, and it takes a bright and fast-thinking intellect to use ingenuity in a situation. Athletes show ingenuity all the time, finding exciting ways to outwit their opponents and to achieve victory. Master criminals rely on their ingenuity in order to evade the law when they are chased. Ingenuity is all about imagination, and an imaginative mind knows that every obstacle can be overcome with a little ingenuity.
Vocabulary lists containing ingenuity
The Diary of a Young Girl
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The Glass Castle
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George H.W. Bush (1924 -2018) Tribute List
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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.
See Examples For:
Chinese developers have relied on a mix of ingenuity, state support, open-source sharing and distilling from U.S. models.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026
Now, in a memo released Wednesday, the White House is attempting to fight back against cybercrime by encouraging private companies to go after transnational criminal organizations “by incorporating the ingenuity of the private sector.”
From Salon ● Aug. 17, 2026
Cubans take pride in facing hardship with resilience and ingenuity, but that fortitude comes at a high psychological cost amid the island's latest protracted crisis.
From Barron's ● Aug. 4, 2026
But the triangle itself – along with its history, architectural ingenuity, and novelty – is exactly the point.
From BBC ● Jul. 26, 2026
The whole world clanged and chuffed with the machinery and instruments that their ingenuity had produced.
From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson
The metal was made to look like painted wood, with jaunty bay windows and miniaturized versions of classic Williams ironwork on the outside, and space-saving ingenuities indoors.
From New York Times ● Jul. 14, 2022
Yet the celebration of digitization renders the driver completely invisible—even though it is their knowledge and ingenuities that allow the technologies to appear frictionless.
From Slate ● Dec. 28, 2020
Galleries and museums are filled with walk-on-by works that, whatever their ingenuities, are basically just variations on old models, wall-filling exercises in easy, comfortable beauty.
From New York Times ● Aug. 8, 2019
This analysis was an easy one, because the song is straight fours and its ingenuities are easy to describe.
From Slate ● Mar. 25, 2014
It is well known how great a part of the day they were employed at their needles and several ingenuities; the queen herself, when more important business would give her leave, working with them.
From The Art of Needle-work, from the Earliest Ages, 3rd ed. Including Some Notices of the Ancient Historical Tapestries by Sutherland Menzies
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.
