Meaning & use
ingenious ideas
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Meanings
phraseplural
clever, original thoughts or plans that solve a problem in a surprising and skillful way.
Grammar: A plural noun phrase; use it with plural verbs, as in 'Ingenious ideas often come from simple questions.'
Patterns
- come up with ingenious ideas
- an ingenious idea for something
- ingenious ideas about something
The team came up with ingenious ideas for reusing old shipping containers as classrooms.
Her notebook is full of ingenious ideas for saving water in dry regions.
Judges praised the students for ingenious ideas that cost almost nothing to build.
phraseplural
clever and imaginative thinking shown by a person or a piece of work.
Grammar: Used to talk about the quality of someone's thinking rather than one single plan.
Patterns
- be full of ingenious ideas
- be known for ingenious ideas
The young engineer is known for ingenious ideas that other people dismiss too quickly.
His early sketches were full of ingenious ideas, even when the drawings themselves were rough.
Common combinations
- come up with ingenious ideas
- Good designers come up with ingenious ideas by watching how people actually behave.
- an ingenious idea for doing something
- She had an ingenious idea for cutting the delivery time in half.
- a stream of ingenious ideas
- The workshop produced a stream of ingenious ideas, though few were practical.
- truly ingenious ideas
- Truly ingenious ideas often look obvious once someone has explained them.
- ingenious ideas about how to do something
- The book is packed with ingenious ideas about how to teach grammar without drills.
Synonyms and how they differ
- clever ideas
- Broader and more neutral; 'clever' can describe anything smart, while 'ingenious' stresses originality and surprise.
- inventive ideas
- Close in meaning, but 'inventive' emphasizes creating something new rather than solving a problem neatly.
- brilliant ideas
- Stronger praise and vaguer; 'brilliant' can mean simply excellent, not necessarily original.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: ingenious ideas or ingenuous?
ingenious ideas vs ingenuous
'Ingenuous' means innocent and honest, almost naive — very different from clever. The two words look similar but have opposite tones.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'ingenious ideas' most naturally?
Choose one answer.
'Ingenious ideas' is a plural noun phrase meaning clever original thoughts, so it fits 'a few ingenious ideas that nobody had tried before'. Option 2 confuses it with 'ingredients', option 3 uses an adjective where a verb is needed, and option 4 uses 'an' with a plural noun.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “ingenious ideas”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.