''disingenuous'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260904152658-00-⌔

disingenuous - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

disingenuous (comparative more disingenuous, superlative most disingenuous)

• Not honourable; unworthy of honour.
• Not ingenuous; not frank or open.
  • ✤ Synonym: uncandid
  • ✤ I am not so vain as to think these Remarks free from faults, nor so disingenuous as not to confess them:¹
• Assuming a pose of naïveté to make a point or for deception.
  • ✤ But was it responsible governance to pass the Longitude Act without other efforts to protect British seamen? Or might it have been subterfuge—a disingenuous attempt to shift attention away from the realities of their life at sea.²

Etymology

From dis- + ingenuous.

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˌdɪ.sɪnˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.əs/
• Audio (US): 🔊
• Audio (Australia): 🔊

Printed 2026-09-04.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 1726, William Broome, edited by Maynard Mack, The Poems of Alexander Pope: The Odyssey of Homer. Books XIII-XXIV, volume 10, Methuen, published 1969, page 378: ↩

2. 2012 March, William E. Carter, Merri Sue Carter, “The British Longitude Act Reconsidered”, in American Scientist ‎${}^{[1]}$, volume 100, number 2, archived from the original on 18 April 2012, page 87: ↩