Naive means trusting and innocent from lack of experience. A naive question, naive about money, it was naive of me.
It is usually mildly critical, though it can be affectionate about the young. It is spelled naive or naïve, both accepted, and pronounced ny-EEV. Naivety is the noun. In art, naive means deliberately or genuinely untrained in style — naive painting is a recognised category. Note that calling your own earlier self naive is one of the safest admissions in English, because it claims growth as well as error.
1adjectivenaiveTrusting and innocent from lack of experience.
“It was naive to think anybody would read it.”
naive is a quality of inexperience.
French naïve is the feminine of naïf, from Latin nativus, native or natural. Naive and native are the same word: to be naive is to be in your natural state, unaltered by experience.
Proto-Indo-European
*ǵenh₁-
Latin
nātīvus — native, natural
French
naïve
English, today
naive
Borrowed from French naïve., feminine form of naïf, from Latin nātīvus (“native, natural”). a doublet of native.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA