Ingenuous means innocent and open, without any guile. An ingenuous smile, ingenuous questions, disarmingly ingenuous.
It is a compliment with a shade of condescension in it, since being ingenuous means not yet knowing how the world works. It is a different word from ingenious, meaning clever, and the two are confused endlessly.
1adjectiveingenuousInnocent and open, without any guile.
“With ingenuous honesty, the little girl told the visitor that her hat was ugly.”
ingenuous is a quality.
Latin ingenuus means freeborn and hence frank, from in plus gignere, to beget.
Latin
ingenuus — of noble character, frank
English, today
ingenuous
Latin ingenuus (“of noble character, frank”). a doublet of ingenu.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA