Skip to main content
A stock character in opera, theater, and literature. She is a girl or young woman who is endearingly wholesome and innocent. Very similar to the girl next door.

She is generally portrayed as sweet, gentle, virtuous, beautiful, demure, with the wide-eyed innocence of a child and she is very often naive. She is often the victim of the libertine, whom she may have mistaken for the hero. Often she still lives with her parents, owing to her youth and naivete.
She is usually the foil for the dangerously seductive femme fatale.
She is often involved in a romantic subplot, usually with the boy next door and the romance is typically innocent and chaste.
The ingenue is typically played by a lyric soprano in opera and musicals.
The ingenue includes the following characters:

Joanna in Sweeney Todd
Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz
Giselle in Enchanted
Pollyanna
Snow White
Rapunzel
Cosette in Les Miserables
Sandy in Grease
Maria in West Side Story
Christine in Phantom of the Opera
Ophelia in Hamlet
Juliet in Romeo and Juliet
Ariel in The Little Mermaid
Belle in Beauty and the Beast
Penny in Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Mimi in La Boheme
Tatiana in Eugene Onegin
ingenue by Lorelili July 7, 2011
ingenue mug front
Get the ingenue mug.
See more merch
A female character in drama or literature. She is a sweet, pretty, if somewhat naive, young woman. To our modern eyes, she's often seen as this meek little mouse.

The ingenue is played by a light soprano in opera or musicals.
Judy Garland's protrayal of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz is the epitome of an ingenue.
ingenue by Lorelili October 29, 2005
Related Words

ingénue 

1. She's quite ingénue to be a Journalist.
2. She's ingénue for her age of girls.
ingénue by Irene17 December 14, 2020

ingenuex 

a saucy girl who dances for the world
"MAN I HOPE THAT INGENUEX WILL COME DANCE FOR US...SHE IS soooooOOoooOo FINE"
;)
ingenuex by alicia July 14, 2004
When someone has no clue what you’re asking for the expectation is they will come up with something brilliant.
I have no idea how Bob is building that thing. It’s pretty ingenus of him.
Ingenus by 1891_level August 30, 2023
It is said of the situation where a person has the bad luck to make contact with his testicles against an undefined surface or object, intentioned or not.
Given the nature of the word, it is more appropriate to design cases where the interaction is made with a moving object, for example, a ball.
Although it is extremely painful for the victim, it tends to be considerably funny to people who witness it.
Today in the baseball game the pitcher took a nutshot; the baseball hit him in the nuts.

Man, I just watched the funniest nutshot video ever.
Nutshot by Uberflaven March 1, 2009
Word of the Day on June 26, 2026

Nerd neck 

A "human" that spends so much time playing video games that their posture is level nerd neck. Everytime anyone goes tryhard they hunch down and their neck gets longer there fore a nerd neck is always hunched down cause they're always going try hard. In other words a nerd neck is a try hard, since their neck is 100% longer than the average human being due to playing too many video games and taking them serious, nerd necks are not even considered human anymore but something more sad. Nerd necks are often found on fortnite, their natural habitat usually being tilted towers.
What a fucking nerd neck!

He is building so fast, nerd neck!

Looser more like a nerd neck ha!
Nerd neck by D Sandwich Maker February 5, 2019
Word of the Day on June 25, 2026