How to spell ingenious

hear itin·gen·ious/ɪn'dʒinjəs/adjectiveSchwa and roots

What it means: Showing inventiveness and skill; clever.

In a sentence: The ingenious mouse cleverly found a way to get the cheese.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as ingenius or ingeneous.

Same family: ingenuity, genius, creative, inventive, clever. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: Ingenious comes from the Latin word 'ingeniosus', meaning 'clever' or 'full of natural talent', which itself is based on 'ingenium', a word for inborn character or ability. It is closely related in origin to the word 'genius', which today we use for people with very exceptional minds.

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa)

Try spelling it

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Words like this

ambitious · envious · industrious · mysterious · generous · religious · glorious · ruinous

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