ingénu
The verdict
“ingénu” is uncommon French (frequency #66,828 among 3,561 “I” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #66,828
- frequency rank, French
- 3,561
- “I” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Qui a de la simplicité et presque de la naïveté dans la franchise.
Corpus desk
Index FR-ingenu · ingénu · French
ingénu · rank #66,828 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #66,828
- LEN-LONG 6 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,561
- PHOTO-FINISH ingrates
Nearest frequency peer: ingrates (-1 rank slots)
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Rangs de longue queue près de « ingénu »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- Indonesia
Indonesia
33,176 corpus weight
- industriali…
industrialiser
33,175 corpus weight
- ingrates
ingrates
33,174 corpus weight
- ingénu
ingénu
33,173 corpus weight
- inrockuptib…
inrockuptibles
33,172 corpus weight
- instructifs
instructifs
33,171 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « ingénu » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | ingénu |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #66,828 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « ingénu » en français
Rare enough to double-check
ingénu is uncommon French at frequency #66,828 among 3,561 “I” headwords, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Qui a de la simplicité et presque de la naïveté dans la franchise.".
Zero misspellings are on record for ingénu in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. Our dataset records no confusable match here, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct French form is ingénu, spelled I-N-G-É-N-U.
Definition
- 1Qui a de la simplicité et presque de la naïveté dans la franchise.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how ingénu appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Elle avait en effet, et de la façon la plus naturelle, le regard ingénu, le geste décevant, la démarche hardie et décente tout ensemble, d'une femme du plus grand monde.
Les loups sont ingénus…
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 French corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "ingénu", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 6 letters (nearest by frequency rank).