disingenuity

Feigned innocence, hidden motives

Disingenuity is the quality of being disingenuous—insincere, calculating, or falsely naive.

Someone acting with disingenuity pretends not to know something they know, or feigns innocence while pursuing hidden motives: The politician's disingenuity was obvious to everyone but his supporters.

The more common noun form is disingenuousness.

deception

dishonesty

Disposition toward falsehood

guile · cunning · artifice · trickery · subterfuge · slyness · craftiness · wiliness · bad faith · two-facedness

pretense

facade

Deceptive outward appearance

posturing · feigning · hypocrisy · sham · fakery · false modesty · pose · playacting · front · veneer

rhetoric

misrepresentation

False or misleading statement

equivocation · obfuscation · misdirection · deflection · weasel words · doublespeak · sophistry · prevarication · selective truth · cherry-picking

Opposites
honesty and transparency

disingenuityhonesty

Truthfulness, sincerity

sincerity · forthrightness · candor · genuineness · frankness

authenticity of character

disingenuitygenuineness

Quality of being real

authenticity · sincerity · good faith · earnestness · wholeheartedness

Family

genuine, genuinely, ingenuity, ingenious, disingenuous, genuineness, ingenuous, ingenuousness, ingenuously

Familiarity
Top 1,000,000
Profile
Used worldwide · Timeless · Abstract · Negative · Everyday, not technical · Rated G