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Definition of "naïve" []

  • Lacking worldly experience and understanding, especially: (adjective)
  • Simple and guileless; artless: a child with a naive charm. (adjective)
  • Unsuspecting or credulous: "Students, often bright but naive, bet—and lose—substantial sums of money on sporting events” ( Tim Layden). (adjective)
  • Showing or characterized by a lack of sophistication and critical judgment: "this extravagance of metaphors, with its naive bombast” ( H.L. Mencken). (adjective)
  • Not previously subjected to experiments: testing naive mice. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "naïve" in a sentence
  • "Once it's here, it's spreading like a virus that's going into what we call a naive population."
  • "At a news conference today with the visiting president of Afghanistan, Mr. Bush attacked what he called a naive conclusion drawn from a major government report on the war on terror."
  • "At a news conference today with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Mr. Bush took aim at what he called a naive conclusion and a political leak."