naïveté
English
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /nɑˌiːvˈteɪ/, /nɑˌiːvəˈteɪ/
Noun
naïveté (countable and uncountable, plural naïvetés)
- Lack of sophistication, experience, judgement or worldliness; artlessness; gullibility; credulity.
- 1995, Sagan, Carl, “The Most Precious Thing”, in The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, First edition, New York: Random House, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 5:
- Maybe Mr. “Buckley” should know to be more skeptical about what’s dished out to him by popular culture. But apart from that, it’s hard to see how it’s his fault. He simply accepted what the most widely available and accessible sources of information claimed was true. For his naïveté, he was systematically misled and bamboozled.
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Usage notes
- According to Google Ngram Viewer corpus data, as of 2019, naïveté and naivety were the most common spellings; naivety was the most common spelling in British English while naïveté was the most common spelling in American English.[1] naivete used to be the most common variant but dropped sharply after 2000.[1] Whether the Viewer accurately tracks accents is unclear.
- Comparing the -ete forms and the -ety forms as two groups yields that in British English -ety forms are slightly more common while in American English the -ete forms are much more common.[2]
- Spellings in dictionaries:
- naïveté is covered by Merriam-Webster (as a variant)[3], AHD[4], Collins (as a variant)[5], OED[6] and Century 1911[7].
- naivete is covered by Merriam-Webster[3].
- naiveté is covered by Merriam-Webster (as less commonly)[3], AHD[4], Collins[5], Cambridge (as a variant)[8], and Macmillan American[9].
- naivety is covered by Macmillan British[9], Cambridge[8] and OED[10].
- US Government Publishing Office manual states that "Diacritical marks are not used with anglicized words" and mentions naive and naivete.[11]
- Guardian and Observer style guide indicates naive, naively, and naivety with no accent.[12]
- The diaeresis in naïveté is there to indicate the vowel is pronounced in a separate syllable.[13]
Related terms
Translations
lack of sophistication, experience, judgement or worldliness; artlessness; gullibility; credulity
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References
- naïveté, naivete, naivety, naïvety, naiveté, naiveness, naïveness at Google Ngram Viewer
- naïveté+naivete+naiveté, naivety+naïvety at Google Ngram Viewer
- “naïveté”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
- “naïveté”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.
- “naïveté”, in Collins English Dictionary.
- “naïveté”, in OED Online
, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, launched 2000. - “naivete”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
- “naivety” in the Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- “naive” (US) / “naive” (UK) in Macmillan English Dictionary.
- “naivety”, in OED Online , Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.
- U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual, govinfo.gov
- Guardian and Observer style guide, theguardian.com
- What's a Diaeresis? | Merriam-Webster
Further reading
- naivete at OneLook Dictionary Search
- naivety at OneLook Dictionary Search
- naive in Britannica Dictionary
Anagrams
French
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /na.iv.te/
Audio (FR) (file)
See also
Further reading
- “naïveté”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
Anagrams
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