NAIVE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Naive

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/nˌaɪˈiv/ Listen

adjective

naive adj.

Having native or unaffected simplicity; ingenuous; artless; frank; as, naïve manners; a naïve person; naïve and unsophisticated remarks.

Having a lack of knowledge, judgment, or experience; especially, lacking sophistication in judging the motives of others; credulous; as, a naive belief in the honesty of politicians.

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Etymology of 'Naive'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Naive" Quotes from Famous Books

... scattered rich cushions, oriental mats and costly rugs of fur. The choicest tapestries which the looms of Arras could furnish draped the walls, whereon the battles of Judas Maccabaeus were set forth, with the Jewish warriors in plate of proof, with crest and lance and banderole, as the naive artists of the day were wont to depict them. A few rich settles and bancals, choicely carved and decorated with glazed leather hangings of the sort termed or basane, completed the furniture of the ...

— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... present time absolutely no figures to go upon if one wishes to learn something about the hours and wages of girls who follow certain occupations in the city. The factory inspectors (admirable men, but very much overworked) come, with the most naive delight, to visit any person who has information to give about the people over whose interests they are supposed to watch with fatherly interest. Clergymen shake their heads, or refer one to homes and charities. One has to find out ...

— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell

... of charity for his neighbor. Profoundly individual, and profoundly attached to his ideas, like all Anglo-Saxons, and in fact like all who have acquired the Protestant habit of free inquiry, he nevertheless had for the Church a docility almost naive and infantile; and this was because he recognized in her the authority and the ...

— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... Between young ladies whose naive exuberance impelled them to throw handkerchiefs at his window and young ladies whose equally naive modesty demanded the withdrawal from his bedroom of a chair on which they had once sat, his lot seemed to have fallen in a troubled ...

— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... the top of their bent, accoutred from top to toe as Mynheer Punch the Great, while his clever little wife—who, by the way, possesses, I think, more of the "vis comica" than any actress of the day—caused sides to shake and eyes to water by her naive and humorous ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

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