They seem to mean the same thing, yet when spoken they sound like the negative of each other.
What's the secret behind those two words?
Learn English – ny relation between “genius” and “ingenious”
etymology
etymology
They seem to mean the same thing, yet when spoken they sound like the negative of each other.
What's the secret behind those two words?
Best Answer
On the surface, one might think that ingenious is somehow based on the word genius. Interestingly, this is not true.
The word ingenious does not actually have the in- prefix for negation. Instead, it comes originally from the Latin ingeniōsus, which means "intellectual, talented, ingenious". At times in history it was also spelled "engenious". Indeed, ingeniōsus appears to be the same root that gave us the word engine.
Genius was originally different, but evolved to have a meaning that is similar to ingenious. It came to us from Latin,
but it was originally Greek. According to the OED, it mainly had the meaning of, approximately, "genie" or similar type of spirit, in Latin. Figuratively, it was also used to mean "characteristic disposition; inclination; bent, turn or temper of mind." In English, German, and most of the Romance languages aside from Latin, it had the meaning of "natural ability" starting around the 1600s. The OED speculates that the meaning of genie was pushed towards the meaning of ingenious because of "confusion" between the two (that is, their superficial similarity).