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INGENIOUS
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Showing inventiveness and skill
Example:
an ingenious solution to the problem
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Similar:
adroit (quick or skillful or adept in action or thought)
Derivation:
ingeniousness (the property of being ingenious)
ingenuity (the power of creative imagination)
Context examples:
I have frequently detected myself in such kind of mistakes, said Elinor, in a total misapprehension of character in some point or other: fancying people so much more gay or grave, or ingenious or stupid than they really are, and I can hardly tell why or in what the deception originated.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
A most ingenious quibble!
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Anne had a moment's astonishment on the subject herself; but it was soon lost in the pleasanter feelings which sprang from the sight of all the ingenious contrivances and nice arrangements of Captain Harville, to turn the actual space to the best account, to supply the deficiencies of lodging-house furniture, and defend the windows and doors against the winter storms to be expected.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
Using ‘single-cell genomics’, scientists at the Wellcome Trust Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute at the University of Cambridge developed an ingenious strategy to uncover what happens in different tadpole cells when they regenerate their tails.
(Scientists find new type of cell that helps tadpoles’ tails regenerate, University of Cambridge)
"Dooced ingenious, I call it," said our peer.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
My aunt, being uncommonly neat and ingenious, made so many little improvements in our domestic arrangements, that I seemed to be richer instead of poorer.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
The fellow was an ingenious workman, and by my instructions, in ten days, finished a pleasure-boat with all its tackling, able conveniently to hold eight Europeans.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Your last remark, said Holmes, presently, as to the possibility of there being an understanding between the burglar and the servant, and this being a note of appointment from one to the other, is an ingenious and not entirely impossible supposition.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I know of your visit to Eduardo Lucas, of your giving him this document, of your ingenious return to the room last night, and of the manner in which you took the letter from the hiding-place under the carpet.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Well, it is very ingenious, said I, laughing; but since, as you said just now, there has been no crime committed, and no harm done save the loss of a goose, all this seems to be rather a waste of energy.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
