Word Finder - ingenuity

definition

The ability to solve difficult problems, often in original, clever, and inventive ways.

example

Ingenuity is one of the characteristics of a beaver.

definition

Ingenuousness; honesty, straightforwardness

The ingenuity of Madame Grotius at length devised a mode of escape.

The narrative presents a number of difficulties, which early commentators sought to solve with more ingenuity than success.

In the body of the work he displays considerable ingenuity in reducing his problems to simple equations, which admit either of direct solution, or fall into the class known as indeterminate equations.

As vice-chancellor of the university of Calcutta, Maine commented, with his usual pregnant ingenuity, on the results produced by the contact of Eastern and Western thought.

Much ingenuity has been spent upon the name and origin of the feast.

I'm forever amazed at your ingenuity.

Galen showed extreme ingenuity in explaining all symptoms and all diseases on his system.

He has applied the theory with especial ingenuity to the interpretation of the circular bony plates in the carapace of the aberrant leather-back sea-turtles (Sphargidae) by prefacing an initial land phase, in which the typical armature of land tortoises was acquired, a first marine or pelagic phase, in which this armature was lost, a third littoral or seashore phase, in which a new polygonal armature was acquired, and a fourth resumed or secondary marine phase, in which this polygonal armature began to degenerate.

Survival required new allies and a lot if ingenuity.

They are now peaceable fisher-folk, who show considerable Mode of ingenuity in their calling.

The instrument was a ingenuity, and was called "the mathematical jewel."

In this he succeeded, though not without a good deal of artifice, more creditable to his ingenuity than to his virtue.

The carrying of the alphabet to the Greeks by the Phoenicians at an early period affords no clue to the period when Semitic ingenuity constructed an alphabet out of a heterogeneous multitude of signs.

This killer seems to demonstrate amazing ingenuity.

Sirian's sharpness and ingenuity in battle had kept Tiyan safe for years.

The construction of the wooden external dome, and the support of the stone lantern by an inner cone of brickwork, quite independent of either the external or internal dome, are wonderful examples of his, constructive ingenuity.

By the middle of the century, logical studies had lost to a great extent their real interest and application, and had degenerated into trivial displays of ingenuity.

Hence much ingenuity is exercised in order to obtain the strongest joint which is consistent with security of union.

These formulae are important on account of the labour and ingenuity expended in devising the most suitable types, and also as a convenient means of recording the experimental data.

Much ingenuity was expended on the development of a history of the gods, the groundwork of which had been laid in much earlier times.

The religious books were for the most part written in archaic language, which was only imperfectly understood by the priests of later times; and hence great scope was given to them to exercise their ingenuity as commentators.

In this obscure region it is rich in suggestions and rapprochements; but the ingenuity of these speculations attracts curiosity more than it satisfies scientific inquiry.

The accuracy of the work in each case depends principally on the skill and ingenuity of the experimentalist in devising methods of eliminating the various sources of error.

Stories were told of the ingenuity and generosity by which he had made the marshes round Selinus salubrious, of the grotesque device by which he laid the winds that ruined the harvests of Agrigentum, and of the almost miraculous restoration to life of a woman who had long lain in a death-like trance.

The fact that no ingenuity of modern research has been able to construct a real budget of expenditure and receipt for any part of the long centuries of the Empire is significant as to the secrecy that surrounded the finances, especially in the later period.

Much ingenuity had, however, to be expended before a method was found of exhibiting such a rotation.

Maxwell suggested new methods for the determination of this ratio of the electrostatic to the electromagnetic units, and by experiments of great ingenuity was able to show that this ratio, which is also that of the velocity of the propagation of an electromagnetic impulse through space, is identical with that of light.

Edison, with copious ingenuity, devised electric meters, electric mains, lamp fittings and generators complete for the purpose.

With all his learning and ingenuity Coke failed in inducing or even forcing the jury to bring in a bill against the court of chancery, and it seems fairly certain that on the technical point of law involved he was wrong.

The rotary presses in use at the present time are indeed wonderful specimens of mechanical ingenuity, all the various operations of damping (when necessary), feeding, printing (both sides), cutting, folding, pasting, wrapping (when required) and counting being purely automatic. These machines are of various kinds, and are specially made to order so as to cope with the particular class of work in view.

The manufacture of a big gun, which was able to compete with the Boer " Long Tom," at the De Beers workshops, under Rhodes's orders, and by the ingenuity of an American, Mr. Labram, who was killed a few days after its completion, forms one of the most striking incidents of the period.

The problem of the interrelations of the classes will thus be reduced to its simplest terms, and even questions as to the nature of the primitive Echinoderm and its affinity to the ancestors of other phyla may become more than exercises for the ingenuity of youth.

There is, however, in Tucker's theological link between private and general happiness a peculiar ingenuity which Paley's common sense has avoided.

Professor Taylor expounds these two theories with great brilliance of argument and much ingenuity, yet neither of them will perhaps carry complete conviction to the minds of the majority of his critics.

While shrewdness, plain straightforwardness, and a certain stern way of looking at life are common to both, the Icelandic school adds a complexity of structure and ornament, an elaborate mythological and enigmatical phraseology, and a regularity of rhyme, assonance, luxuriance, quantity and syllabification, which it caught from the Latin and Celtic poets, and adapted with exquisite ingenuity to its own main object, that of securing the greatest possible beauty of sound.

By such an alliance, largely due to the political ingenuity of Dallas, M ` Kean was re-elected.

To the ignorant it was recommended by its conformity to crude common sense; to the learned, by the wealth of ingenuity expended in bringing it to perfection.

Both irregularities had been noted, a century earlier, by Edmund Halley; both had, since that time, vainly exercised the ingenuity of the ablest mathematicians; both now almost simultaneously yielded their secret to the same fortunate inquirer.

If less readily amenable to civilizing influences than their neighbours to the eastward, the Fijians show greater force of character and ingenuity.

In the cultivation of rice they show very great ingenuity, the ketsa grounds, where the rice is sown before transplanting, being formed either on the margins of the streams or in the hollows of the hills in a series of terraces, to which water is often conducted from a considerable distance.

What we call Self is, above all, such a central mass, and Herbart seeks to show with great ingenuity and detail how this position is occupied at first chiefly by the body, then by the seat of ideas and desires, and finally by that first-personal Self which recollects the past and resolves concerning the future.

During a prolonged audience he had received from the pope assurances of private esteem and personal protection; and he trusted to his dialectical ingenuity to find the means of presenting his scientific convictions under the transparent veil of an hypothesis.

The horizontal section (B) with equal clearness demonstrates the bee's ingenuity in economizing space, showing how the outer combs are used exclusively for stores, and, as such, may be built of varying thickness as more or less storage room is required.

Then, after a long schooling in ingenuity by the system of household industries, came the division of labour, the introduction of machinery and the modern factory.

I couldn't hazard a guess how the killer might trace our friend but he'd certainly displayed amazing ingenuity in the past.

One must particularly admire the ingenuity of the creators of some of the parasites, particularly those with several hosts.

It seems that all the ingenuity has gone into inventing new euphemisms rather than finessing them into poetry.

One has to admire the ingenuity of the croquet community.

It does require ingenuity to find excuses for them being incoherent.

Yet he makes up for this by sheer ingenuity of script.