Definition for IN-GE-NU'I-TY

IN-GE-NU'I-TY, n. [Fr. ingenuité.]

  1. The quality or power of ready invention; quickness or acuteness in combining ideas, or in forming new combinations; ingeniousness; skill; used of persons. How many machines for saving labor, has the ingenuity of men devised and constructed.
  2. Curiousness in design, the effect of ingenuity; as, the ingenuity of a plan or of mechanism.
  3. Openness of heart; fairness; candor. [This sense of the word was formerly common, and is found in good authors down to the age of Locke, and even later; but it is now wholly obsolete. In lieu of it, ingenuousness is used.]

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