Due to lack of experience and maturity, children are naive.
The adjective naïve is used to describe the innocent or gullible individual. The term comes from ingenuus , a word from the Latin language.
For example: “How could you be so naive and give all your savings to a man you didn't know?” , “The young defender committed a naive penalty that the captain of the rival team capitalized on” , “It was naive to think that we were going to solve the company's problems quickly” .
Why is someone naive
Lack of maturity and experience makes a person naive. That is why naivety is usually a characteristic of children, who tend to believe what they are told. As the years go by, human beings acquire the ability to more accurately distinguish what is true from what is false and also tend to become more distrustful.
However, adults are often naive and fall victim to deception . Suppose a man receives an email from a supposed African millionaire asking for help getting a large amount of money out of his country. This subject requests a bank account to transfer the amount, promising the recipient of the email a percentage as a commission. A few days later, to deal with unforeseen expenses, the “millionaire” requests that $2,000 be sent to him, which will allow him to carry out procedures and then transfer the money. Naively, the individual who receives the emails sends the sum: he is never contacted again.
Someone naive is gullible or innocent.
A feature that almost always appears
Naivety is not an exclusive trait of some people, but a state that we all go through and can go through from time to time in life. While it is true that there are especially naive individuals, who tend to fall into the clutches of profiteers or believe in unfounded things very frequently, no one is safe from a mistake of this type.
To a certain extent, being naive can help us live day-to-day life with enthusiasm: it is not wrong to let ourselves be carried away by fantasy if this allows us to smile more often. The problem begins when naivety leads us to lose important things, such as our belongings or even certain opportunities that should be ours but we hand them over to someone who takes advantage of our lack of attention .
Alert the naive
It is important to note that the use of this word to refer to a third party usually denotes a certain degree of compassion, although there may also be some resentment if their excessive innocence has affected us. For example, if we say to someone "it's just that you are so naive too," we are not insulting them but rather expressing that we are sorry that this is the case because we see that they have been the victim of deception .
Telling another that we consider them naive may be an attempt to help them open their eyes, to be more attentive to potential freeloaders who will always be waiting for the next opportunity to confuse and harm them. Of course, not everyone receives this adjective with joy, since it could well be interpreted as a sign of contempt.
In short, we cannot go around calling any individual who acts without caution naive, but in any case it is appropriate to show empathy to someone close to them to help them mature. Furthermore, it is important to note that if an adult says it to a child it is much softer than the opposite, unless there is a strong emotional bond and it is a wake-up call for their own good.
archetypal character
Known as the ingénue, on the other hand, is an archetypal theater character corresponding to a candid woman who is usually deceived.
Usually the ingenue is a pretty young woman who falls into the traps of another character whom she mistakes for the hero.