ingenious

adj
/ɪnˈd͡ʒiːnjəs/

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French ingénieux, from Old French engenious, from Latin ingeniōsus (“endowed with good natural capacity, gifted with genius”), from ingenium (“innate or natural quality, natural capacity, genius”), from in- (“in”) + gignere (“to produce”), Old Latin genere. See also engine.

  1. derived from genere
  2. derived from ingeniōsus — “endowed with good natural capacity, gifted with genius
  3. derived from engenious
  4. borrowed from ingénieux

Definitions

  1. Of a person, displaying genius or brilliance

    Of a person, displaying genius or brilliance; inventive.

    • This fellow is ingenious; he fixed a problem I didn’t even know I had.
  2. Of a thing, characterized by genius

    Of a thing, characterized by genius; cleverly contrived or done.

    • That is an ingenious model of the atom.
    • Many ingenious lovely things are gone / That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude, / protected from the circle of the moon / That pitches common things about.
  3. Showing originality or sagacity

    Showing originality or sagacity; witty.

    • He sent me an ingenious reply to an email.
    • I have scarcely recovered the surprise of the ingenious question, before I meet another surprise in the still more ingenious answer

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at ingenious. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01ingenious02brilliance03capacity04capability05user06licensee07granted08syllogistic09syllogism10artifice

A definitional loop anchored at ingenious. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

10 hops · closes at ingenious

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA