naively

N1A1I1V4E1L1Y4
/naɪˈivli/

adverb

In a naive manner.

UncommonScrabble 13

Meanings

adverbnaively (comparative more naively, superlative most naively)

comparative more naively · superlative most naively · alternative naïfly · alternative naïvely

  1. In a naive manner.

    They naively (or is it narrowmindedly?) believe that the unpardonable sin of past eras was not having twentieth-century thoughts.

    1997, Harold Raley, A Watch Over Mortality: The Philosophical Story of Julian Marias, →ISBN, page 145
    5 more examples

    The order was written. In less than ten days everything was "on wheels" and the whole body of these Sioux [was] on the move to the country they had indicated, and the Secretary of the Interior says, naively, in his report for 1868, "The Indians were found to be quite determined to move westward, and the promise of the government in that respect was faithfully kept."

    1881, Helen Hunt Jackson, chapter V, in A Century of Dishonor

    At this point there may possibly be a few readers who naively expect that they will somehow be held exempt from this law of universal klutzhood. Not for them the indignities of life as a bungling beginner.

    1982, John Cassidy, The Hacky-Sack Book, page 22

    There are too many gratuitous and insulting characters, like Mary Fisher's employee, a stereotyped Latino stud, and the old people in a nursing home who are presented as unindividuated and naively happy.

    1989 December 24, Elizabeth Pincus, “Screwball Glitz And Revolt Against Misogyny”, in Gay Community News, volume 17, number 24, page 16

    When Trump's election pulled back the curtain on the rise of the far-right in America, I'd naively assumed the Jewish left would be vindicated.

    2019, Eli Valley, “A Springtime of Erasure”, in Jewish Currents, number Fall 2019, page 14

    We first identify prominent modes of hallucination by conducting a systematic human study on generated responses which reveals one major source of hallucination as the (mis)-use of wrong entities to describe factual content (Kryscinski et al., 2020), a problem that persists when naively applying language models in dialogue systems.

    2021 September 14, Nouha Dziri, Andrea Madotto, Osmar Zaiane, Avishek Joey Bose, “Neural Path Hunter: Reducing Hallucination in Dialogue Systems via Path Grounding”, in arXiv:2104.08455 [cs], →DOI, archived from the original on 12 Jan 2023

Synonyms & antonyms

Also see

Origin

  1. Frenchnaïf
  2. Frenchnaïve
  3. Englishnaive
  4. Proto-Indo-European*leyg-
  5. Proto-Germanic*līką
  6. Englishnaively

From naive + -ly.

Full word history & related roots →

Translations

Catalan ingènuament
  • ingènuamentin a naive manner
Czech naivně
  • naivněin a naive manner
Esperanto naive
  • naivein a naive manner
Finnish naiivisti
  • naiivistiin a naive manner
Hungarian naivan
  • naivanin a naive manner
Polish naiwnie
  • naiwniein a naive manner
Portuguese inocentemente
  • inocentementein a naive manner
Russian наи́вно
  • наи́вно (naívno)in a naive manner
Spanish ingenuamente
  • ingenuamentein a naive manner
Cite this entry
APA

naively. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/naively

MLA

“naively.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/naively. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “naively,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/naively.

Source: naively on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.