Meanings
comparative more semi-naïf · superlative most semi-naïf
- alternativeAlternative form of semi-naive.
Other Australian work which impressed included the semi-naïf paint-[…]
1986, Studio International, page 445 more examples
Marc Chagall comes from Vitebsk but has nothing Jewish about him in looks, in manner, in any peculiarities. Yet he paints almost nothing but ghetto life—and in a semi-naïf, rather childish fashion, does it with enough feeling to “put it over.”
1978, Sidney Alexander, Marc Chagall: A Biography, New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, page 460Drawings of a simple, semi-naïf type also stress the homely, almost accidental tenor of the re-tellings.
1979, Growing Point, page 3509Up some steps behind the hotel the All Saints church was built in 1620–30 and is now being restored; it has new paintings in a nice light style and semi-naïf icons.
2002, Tim Burford, Georgia with Armenia, Bradt Travel Guides, →ISBN, page 128Rebeyrolle’s semi-naïf, deliberately ugly and pathetic portraits, still lifes and rude examinations of the bestial world were hailed as a vital example of revelatory realism, admired in France as in England for their durable construction of quotidian objects and bulky bodies, suggesting the necessity of a committed return to drawing and modelling after the Old Masters.
2009, Natalie Adamson, Painting, Politics and the Struggle for the École de Paris, 1944–1964, Ashgate Publishing, →ISBN, page 136Politi had actually made multiethnicity a focus of his art (before it became the norm) and showed a penchant for expressions of ethnically costumed festive celebration in a simple, even semi-naïf vein (appropriate to children’s literature).
2014, Luisa Del Giudice, “Afterword: Personal Reflections on the Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative”, in Sabato Rodia’s Towers in Watts: Art, Migrations, Development, New York, N.Y.: Fordham University Press, →LCCN, page 344
Cite this entry
semi-naïf. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/semi-na%C3%AFf
“semi-naïf.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/semi-na%C3%AFf. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “semi-naïf,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/semi-na%C3%AFf.
Source: semi-naïf on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.