Talk:ingenuous

Feigned naivety
This article omits what I would have thought is now the most usual meaning of the word: with feigned naivety, either playfully or dishonestly pretending to be ignorant of something. My current context is a discussion of Luther's translation of Romans 3.28 with "alleine durch den Glauben", i.e. "by faith alone", although the word "alone" was not in the Greek text. He later defended it by suggesting "alleine" is required by German idiom and has no other significance. This was ingenuous, because he knew full well that this word was anchoring the radical new sola fide doctrine in the Bible text.

A quick google search finds another example: ''However, “there is little reason to believe that the Bushmen were moved as a consequence” of the possible discovery of diamonds in the CKGR, Solway argues ingenuously (p.328). After all, a diamond mine would take just a small amount of area, a few square km at most, a trivial parcel compared to the vast area, 52,000 square km., of the entire CKGR. [...] She ignores the fact that the former president of Botswana, Festus Mogae, as much as admitted that the whole controversy over the expulsion of the San people was over diamonds. On my reading of this, the word ingenuously'' here implies that Solway was fully aware that the diamond mining companies were responsible for population displacement in the Kalahari, but she doesn't want to admit it.

I don't want to add that to the article yet, because I don't have a dictionary source. But I think this is the most important contemporary usage. I would be happy to be taught otherwise. Doric Loon (talk) 10:40, 1 October 2023 (UTC)


 * As an afterthought, I wonder if there is an interference with disingenuous here? Doric Loon (talk) 13:25, 11 December 2023 (UTC)