Ingenious

How to spell ingenious

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce ingenious

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ingenious mean?

1. adjectiveShowing cleverness and originality, especially in devising a smart solution or design.

Ingenious in a sentence

• The engineer found an ingenious way to cut the project costs in half.

• Her ingenious filing system let the whole office locate any document in seconds.

Where does ingenious come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin ingeniosus, meaning 'gifted with natural talent' or 'clever', which was built on the noun ingenium, a person's inborn ability or natural disposition. That noun in turn joined the prefix in- with the verb gignere, meaning 'to beget' or 'to produce', so the underlying picture is of talent that is born inside someone rather than learned. English borrowed it through Old French during the fifteenth century, at first describing people of natural intellect and later the clever inventions and solutions such minds produce. The very same gen- root for birth and creation runs through a family of relatives such as 'genius', 'generate', and 'genuine'. A useful trap to remember is that ingenious (clever) sits right beside the near-twin ingenuous (innocent or candid), which traces to a separate Latin word, ingenuus, meaning 'native-born' and so 'free' and 'frank'; the clever sense keeps the 'i' before the 'ous'.

How the word is built

• in- (in, into)
• gen- (from gignere: to give birth to, produce)
• -ious (adjective suffix)