{"id":13016,"date":"2016-10-18T13:18:13","date_gmt":"2016-10-18T12:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=13016"},"modified":"2016-10-18T13:18:13","modified_gmt":"2016-10-18T12:18:13","slug":"ingenious-genius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=13016","title":{"rendered":"Ingenious genius"},"content":{"rendered":"

The word ingenious<\/strong> sounds like the antonym (opposite) of genius<\/strong> as in-<\/em> is often used as a negative suffix (invisible, indivisible, etc). However they are not.<\/p>\n

Ingenious<\/strong> means:<\/p>\n

– displaying genius or brilliance
\n– tending to invent
\n– characterized by genius
\n– cleverly done or contrived; witty; original; shrewd; adroit; keen; sagacious.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It comes from: <\/p>\n

– the Middle French ing\u00e9nieux<\/em> (ingenious)<\/p>\n

– from the Old French engenious<\/em> (ingenious)<\/p>\n

– from the Latin ingeni\u014dsus<\/em> \u200e(endowed with good natural capacity, gifted with genius), from ingenium<\/em> \u200e(innate or natural quality, natural capacity, genius), from in<\/em> \u200e(in) and gignere<\/em> \u200e(to produce)<\/p>\n

– from the Old Latin genere<\/em>, from genus<\/em> (birth, origin)<\/p>\n

– from the Proto-Italic *genos<\/em> (lineage, origin)<\/p>\n

– from the Proto-Indo-European *\u01f5\u00e9nh\u2081os<\/em> \u200e(race), from *\u01f5enh\u2081-<\/em> \u200e(to produce, beget).<\/p>\n

Genius<\/strong> means:<\/p>\n

– someone possessing extraordinary intelligence or skill; especially somebody who has demonstrated this by a creative or original work in science, music, art etc.
\n– extraordinary mental capacity
\n– inspiration, a mental leap, an extraordinary creative process
\n– the guardian spirit of a place or person (in Roman mythology)
\n– a way of thinking, optimizing one’s capacity for learning and understanding<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It comes from:<\/p>\n

– the Latin genius<\/em> \u200e(the guardian spirit of a person, spirit, inclination, wit, genius, literally \u201cinborn nature\u201d), from gign\u014d<\/em> \u200e(to beget, produce)<\/p>\n

– from the Old Latin gen\u014d<\/em><\/p>\n

– from the Proto-Indo-European root *\u01f5enh\u2081-<\/em> (see above)<\/p>\n

So ingenious and genius come from the same root, as do many other words, but took different paths to arrive at their modern forms.<\/p>\n

In Proto-Celtic the PIE root *\u01f5enh\u2081-<\/em> became *gniyeti<\/em> (to make, to do), which became gn\u00edid \/ \u00b7gn\u00ed<\/em> (to do, to work) in Old Irish, which, with a suffix became dogn\u00ed<\/em> (to do, to make), which became d\u00e9an<\/em> in Modern Irish, jean<\/em> in Manx and d\u00e8an<\/em> in Scottish Gaelic. This is possibly also the root of the Welsh gwneud<\/em>, the Cornish gul<\/em> and the Breton (g)ober). All these words mean to do or to make. <\/p>\n

Sources: Wiktionary<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The word ingenious sounds like the antonym (opposite) of genius as in- is often used as a negative suffix (invisible, indivisible, etc). However they are not. Ingenious means: – displaying genius or brilliance – tending to invent – characterized by genius – cleverly done or contrived; witty; original; shrewd; adroit; keen; sagacious. It comes from: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92,97,104,107,127,10,15,23,45,56,77,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breton","category-cornish","category-english","category-etymology","category-irish","category-language","category-latin","category-manx","category-proto-indo-european","category-scottish-gaelic","category-welsh","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13016\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}