Synonyms:
naive, naif
Meaning: marked by or showing unaffected simplicity and lack of guile or worldly experience; "a teenager's naive ignorance of life"; "the naive assumption that things can only get better"; "this naive simple creature with wide friendly eyes so eager to believe appearances"
Usage examples
"That's a great pity," was his naive reply.
She looked about her with the naive curiosity I remembered so well.
She saw in them a comedy of naive pretences, but hardly anything genuine except her own appalled indignation.
"No, no, I'm coming to look on, too," exclaimed Kalganov, brushing aside in the most naive way Grushenka's offer to sit with him.
And the smallest, Lily, was bewitching in her naive astonishment at everything, and it was difficult not to smile when, after taking the sacrament, she said in English, "Please, some more."
One may often nowadays hear from persons in authority the naive complaint that the best people are always, by some strange--as it seems to them--fatality, to be found in the camp of the opposition.
Sometimes this truth is ignored in a singularly naive way, even by the ablest men. For instance, Mr. Bernard Shaw speaks with hearty old-fashioned contempt for the idea of miracles, as if they were a sort of breach of faith on the part of nature: he seems strangely unconscious that miracles are only the final flowers of his own favourite tree, the doctrine of the omnipotence of will.