naive

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   of or created by one without formal training

   simple or naive in style

2. 2
   adj

   marked by or showing unaffected simplicity and lack of guile or worldly experience

   a teenager's naive ignorance of life

3. 3
   adj

   Lacking worldly experience, wisdom, or judgement; unsophisticated.

   Whether by design or driven by the force of circumstances, they have always directed their main effort toward gaining the support of this "elite," while the more conservative groups have acted, as regularly but unsuccessfully, on a more naive view of mass democracy and have usually vainly tried directly to reach and to persuade the individual voter.

4. 4
   adj

   Not having been exposed to something.

   Animals entering shelters are either (a) immunologically naïve and susceptible to infection and development of disease if exposed to pathogens; (b) already immune […]

5. 5
   adj

   Produced in a simple, childlike style, deliberately rejecting sophisticated techniques.

   By 1921 when Miró painted his key work, naive painting had been recognized by the avantgarde art world as a genre in its own right.

6. 6
   adj

   Intuitive; designed to follow the way ordinary people approach a problem.

   We have experiments of running our matching algorithm and a naive matching algorithm for such a term tree and a tree, and have compared the performance of the two algorithms.

7. 7
   noun

   A naive person; a greenhorn.

   As a seasoned woman—of nineteen—I felt it was my place to tell each of these naïves that such plans were easier made than followed.

8. 8
   adj

   not initiated

Etymology

Borrowed from French naïve, feminine form of naïf, from Latin nātīvus (“native, natural”). Doublet of native.