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What is "ingenious"

Crossword clues for ingenious

ingenious
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
ingenious
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
cunning/clever/ingenious
▪ They devised a cunning plan to get back their money.
▪ The gang devised a cunning plan to rob the bank.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
more
▪ A more ingenious theory claims that the stripes operate as a form of visual bonding between members of each herd.
▪ As the Victorian age got under way, ever more ingenious technologies aided the steady advance of drainage.
▪ Some slave-makers are more ingenious.
most
▪ On the face of it a most ingenious scheme.
▪ It was a most ingenious demonstration.
▪ He was the most ingenious fisherman, the most resourceful craftsman, and the most competent sailor whom I had ever met.
▪ Undoubtedly one of the most ingenious house tracks ever.
▪ But their most ingenious use is in the making of insect traps.
▪ Even so the most ingenious phraseology could not truly reconcile the many disparate concerns of the allies.
▪ Great, thought Sly, a most ingenious paradox.
■ NOUN
method
▪ Some advertise their trips as environmental Journeys and have hit on an ingenious method of sponsorship.
▪ He had been using an ingenious method.
▪ Considerable effort has gone into evaluating the risks and developing ingenious methods to reduce them.
way
▪ An ingenious way of opening a second front.
▪ Volunteers, sometimes wearing blue lapel pins in the shape of crutches, raised money in numerous and often ingenious ways.
▪ A more rare and highly ingenious way of decorating carnelian was invented by the Sumerians.
▪ He had to admit it was an ingenious way to phrase the question to a young audience.
▪ Many fish have ingenious ways of protecting their eggs from predators, - mostly other fish.
▪ Other corporations have devised ingenious ways to test and season their executives, according to McCall et al.
▪ Instead, in an ingenious way, it uses a flywheel generator.
▪ What he really enjoyed was the challenge and the stimulation of new problems to be solved in new and ingenious ways.
ways
▪ Many fish have ingenious ways of protecting their eggs from predators, - mostly other fish.
▪ Volunteers, sometimes wearing blue lapel pins in the shape of crutches, raised money in numerous and often ingenious ways.
▪ Although some bugs rarely indulge, others enjoy it on demand, and in many ingenious ways.
▪ Other corporations have devised ingenious ways to test and season their executives, according to McCall et al.
▪ What he really enjoyed was the challenge and the stimulation of new problems to be solved in new and ingenious ways.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ A scanner is an ingenious device which enables you to feed pictures, photos or documents into a computer system.
▪ American scientists have come up with an ingenious way of getting rid of cockroaches.
▪ an ingenious marketing strategy
▪ In the end it was Pete who thought of a really ingenious solution to the problem.
▪ The catalogue is full of ingenious ideas for transforming your house into a dream home.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Ingenious

Ingenious \In*gen"ious\, a. [L. ingeniosus, fr. ingenium innate or natural quality, natural capacity, genius: cf. F. ing['e]nieux. See Engine.]

  1. Possessed of genius, or the faculty of invention; skillful or promp to invent; having an aptitude to contrive, or to form new combinations; as, an ingenious author, mechanic.

    A man . . . very wise and ingenious in feats of war.
    --Hakluyt.

    Thou, king, send out For torturers ingenious.
    --Shak.

    The more ingenious men are, the more apt are they to trouble themselves.
    --Sir W. Temple.

  2. Proceeding from, pertaining to, or characterized by, genius or ingenuity; of curious design, structure, or mechanism; as, an ingenious model, or machine; an ingenious scheme, contrivance, etc.

    Thus men go wrong with an ingenious skill.
    --Cowper.

  3. Witty; shrewd; adroit; keen; sagacious; as, an ingenious reply.

  4. Mental; intellectual. [Obs.]

    A course of learning and ingenious studies.
    --Shak.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
ingenious

early 15c., "intellectual, talented," from Middle French ingénieux "clever, ingenious" (Old French engeignos), from Latin ingeniosus "of good capacity, full of intellect; clever, gifted with genius," from ingenium "innate qualities, ability," literally "that which is inborn," from in- "in" (see in- (2)) + gignere, from PIE *gen- "produce" (see genus). Sense of "skillful, clever at contrivance" first recorded 1540s. In a sense of "crafty, clever, skillful" Middle English had enginous (mid-14c.), from Old French engeignos, also engineful "skillful (in war)" (c.1300). Related: Ingeniously; ingeniousness.

Wiktionary
ingenious

a. 1 Displaying genius or brilliance; tending to invent. 2 Characterized by genius; cleverly done or contrived. 3 witty; original; shrewd; adroit; keen; sagacious.

WordNet
ingenious

  1. adj. (used of persons or artifacts) marked by independence and creativity in thought or action; "an imaginative use of material"; "the invention of the knitting frame by another ingenious English clergyman"- Lewis Mumford; "an ingenious device"; "had an inventive turn of mind"; "inventive ceramics" [syn: imaginative, inventive]

  2. skillful (or showing skill) in adapting means to ends; "cool prudence and sensitive selfishness along with quick perception of what is possible--these distinguish an adroit politician"; "came up with a clever story"; "an ingenious press agent"; "an ingenious scheme" [syn: adroit, clever]

  3. showing inventiveness and skill; "a clever gadget"; "the cunning maneuvers leading to his success"; "an ingenious solution to the problem" [syn: clever, cunning]

Wikipedia
Ingenious (board game)

Ingenious is the English name for Einfach Genial (Simply Ingenious), a German abstract strategy board game designed by Reiner Knizia under commission from Sophisticated Games and published in 2004 by Kosmos. Across most of Europe it is titled as the local translation of Ingenious or Simply Ingenious, the notable exception being Mensa Connections in the UK.

Ingenious (2009 British film)

Ingenious is a one-off drama produced by Lime Pictures and written especially for CBBC by Jeanette Winterson. It premiered on BBC One.

Ingenious (disambiguation)

Ingenious is an adjective meaning having the quality of ingenuity.

Ingenious may also refer to:

  • Ingenious (board game) (2004) by Reiner Knizia
  • Ingenious (2009 American film), a 2009 drama comedy romance film, originally titled Lightbulb, starring Dallas Roberts, Jeremy Renner, Ayelet Zurer
  • Ingenious (2009 British film), a 2009 British television family drama starring Anna Bray, David Calder, Reece Douglas
  • Ingenious Media UK media investment and advisory group
Ingenious (2009 American film)

Ingenious (originally titled Lightbulb) is a 2009 American film. It is a rags-to-riches story of two friends, a small-time inventor and a sharky salesman, who hit rock bottom before coming up with a gizmo that becomes a worldwide phenomenon. It is based on the true story of some friends who are trying to come up with an invention, before hitting on an idea.

Usage examples of "ingenious".

The most wealthy families ruined by partial fines and confiscations, and the great body of his subjects oppressed by ingenious and aggravated taxes.

Weeks having written an ingenious and excellent treatise on the treatment of the bee, we freely recommend his book to the attention of every apiarian who wishes to succeed in their management.

Ysabel the doctor employs an ingenious apparatus for discovering the cause of sickness and ascertaining its cure.

Throughout the call the talk had been frankly, inevitably personal, and Susan Bates had treated Eliza Marshall, whose difficult and captious character she at once apprehended, with the most elaborate and ingenious simplicity.

Whereat I stood musing and commending to my selfe the ingenious and apt inuention of the Arthist, in the vse of such a stone, which of his owne nature to contrarie proportions affoorded contrarie coulers, and in such sort as by the raysing vp of hir small plummage aboue hir seare, hir beack halfe open, and hir toung appearing in the middest thereof, as if she had beene resolutely intended, and eagerly bent to haue gorged hir selfe vpon it.

The bicyclette had the pedals fixed to drive the back wheel by the ingenious use of a chain and sprocket wheel, and so was not, strictly speaking, a bicycle at all.

She hustled him out of his pile of blankets and set him to sweeping floors, helping in the laundries, and cleaning the various ingenious instruments of lighting that had accumulated in this place over the yearsbrass candlesticks and chamber-sticks, candle-snuffers, wax-jacks, bougie boxes, wick-trimmers, douters, candle-boxes, and lamps.

Our surgeons have operated upon many hundreds of bad cases by a very ingenious and almost painless method, that requires no use of bougies in the after-treatment.

We were shewn into a small parlour, and a few minutes afterwards a nun came in, went straight to the grating, touched a spring, and made four squares of the grating revolve, which left an opening sufficiently large to enable the two friends to embrace the ingenious window was afterwards carefully closed.

Vavasour, as he toiled and toiled at his ingenious and graceful cheateries, pleased himself with anticipating the importance and advantages the heir to his labours would enjoy.

Clay Wallace of New York, who published a very ingenious little book on the eye about twenty years ago, with vignettes reminding one of Bewick, was among the first, if not the first, to describe the ciliary muscle, to which the power of adjustment is generally ascribed.

The magician-in-public-practice needs only to make one really bad mistake before he is done to some unpleasantly ingenious death by his clientry, and this was going to turn out to be the biggest magico-prophetic blooper in all the long unrecorded history of Kwannon.

And so the untiring and ingenious Codd proceeded making his case unnaturally good.

I could not help laughing at the contrivance, which struck me as at once ingenious and diabolical, but I could not make up my mind to avail myself of it.

I required some kind of heat in my room, and could not bear a charcoal brazier, so I incited an ingenious tin-smith to make me a stove with a pipe going out of the window.