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Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
naivete

1670s, from French naïveté, from Old French naiveté "genuineness, authenticity," literally "native disposition" (see naive). Englished form naivety is attested from 1708.

Wiktionary
naivete

n. (alternative spelling of naïveté English)

WordNet
naivete

n. lack of sophistication or worldliness [syn: naivety, naiveness] [ant: sophistication]

Usage examples of "naivete".

With bad grace the worm terminated it before his naivete became apparent to all.

It is an impossibility, and I don know how many readers have snickered at Coleridge naivete in this.

Sara was only thirteen, but she was extremely precocious, dark complexioned, and full of wit; she was continually uttering naivetes, of which she understood the whole force, although looking at her face one would have thought her perfectly innocent.

Olivia, accustomed to gibes of this kind from her children took no notice but stared at Chloe, awaiting a further naivete.

Her naivete and David's inexperience with Caribe culture lead them into several tight circumstances, most notably a meeting with a psychopathic drug dealer that quivers with tension.

Though some were cagy, hinting at Amazing Simplicity and Ingenious Devising, whilst giving no details, most of the letters were all-out philo-sophick confessions, showing either an unhealthy naivete, or an inner certainty that the Scheme would never work anyway.

Peter Howard had cherished her for her naivete and her innocence - Now, as Leonora was arranging to auction off her virginity, Emily realised, with a chilling start, that her innocence had already been lost.

But Los Angeles still had a pretty good grip on childish naivete and, in a world where things were getting entirely too serious, Endore thought that was an excellent thing.

Well, they weren't exactlv intellectuals, so perhaps-partly out of naivete, partly out of snobbery and esprit de corps-they invented a personal ceremony to distinguish themselves from the other Crusaders.

The real enemy had at last declared itself, stealthily, but with a stealth which was naivete itself in comparison with the ancient guile of the jungle.

It was eons old, but unable to slough off the fact of flesh, while he, for all his naivetes, had made his peace with that disposal.

Now that I saw whither his twisted thoughts tended, I didn't know whether to laugh out loud or pity the naivete that believed genre authors could influence anything except their editors' drinking problems.