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What is "disingenuous"

Crossword clues for disingenuous

disingenuous
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
disingenuous
adjective
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ It's disingenuous of politicians to blame journalists for leaks that appear in the press.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And all he gets are these one-liner and bum steers and cheerful shrugs that may or may not be disingenuous.
▪ But it was disingenuous of me.
▪ On the more general point, charges of corruption were disingenuous.
▪ The public events in Washington this past weekend have also had their disingenuous side.
▪ This is not to say that those who signed the majority Report were disingenuous.
▪ This is the kind of disingenuous hair-splitting that gives politics a bad name.
▪ Yentob is being slightly disingenuous when demanding parental control.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Disingenuous

Disingenuous \Dis`in*gen"u*ous\, a.

  1. Not noble; unbecoming true honor or dignity; mean; unworthy; as, disingenuous conduct or schemes.

  2. Not ingenuous; wanting in noble candor or frankness; not frank or open; uncandid; unworthily or meanly artful.

    So disingenuous as not to confess them [faults].
    --Pope. -- Dis`in*gen"u*ous*ly, adv.
    --T. Warton. -- Dis`in*gen"u*ous*ness, n.
    --Macaulay.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
disingenuous

"lacking in candor," 1650s, from dis- "opposite of" + ingenuous. Related: Disingenuously; disingenuousness.

Wiktionary
disingenuous

a. 1 Not noble; unbecoming true honor or dignity; mean; unworthy; fake or deceptive. 2 Not ingenuous; not frank or open; uncandid; unworthily or meanly artful. 3 Assuming a pose of naïveté to make a point or for deception.

WordNet
disingenuous

adj. not straightforward or candid; giving a false appearance of frankness; "an ambitious, disingenuous, philistine, and hypocritical operator, who...exemplified...the most disagreeable traits of his time"- David Cannadine; "a disingenuous excuse" [syn: artful] [ant: ingenuous]

Usage examples of "disingenuous".

Is not this a little disingenuous, in view of the very careful distinctions made by his critic concerning the experiments performed for the relief of suffering men?

The President, in unfurling his June 2002 doctrine of preemption at West Point, was disingenuous in suggesting that proof of an emerging threat would be needed to trigger action.

Considering the president's unspoken opposition to his candidacy, the remark was disingenuous.

It is idle, it is disingenuous, to deny or to dissemble the early depravations of Christianity, its gradual but rapid departure from its primitive simplicity and purity, still more, from its spirit of universal love.

It is idle, it is disingenuous, to deny or to dissemble the early depravations of Christianity, its gradual but rapid departure from its primitive simplicity and purity, still more, from its spirit of universal love.

With his baby face and disingenuous manner, he'd have garnered plenty of public sympathy for being led astray by a loose woman.

Hence Rufus, for the most part, did discourage them, and made use of that as a criterion of the ingenuous and disingenuous.

She had the knack of seeming full of disingenuous chatter but I already felt that nothing vital would be wheedled out of this witness.