Ingenuity is the skill of inventing things and thinking up new ideas — especially clever little solutions when you do not have much to work with. A student who turns old bottles into lamps is showing ingenuity. So is someone who finds a new way through a puzzle. The word is usually uncountable: her ingenuity, a lot of ingenuity, not often “an ingenuity.” It is a warm, praising word; it points to a mind that can make and fix, not just a mind that knows facts. Though actually, the history is a tangle. The Latin word behind it first meant the open, honest quality of a free-born person — closer to ingenuous. English later used ingenuity for clever inventing, because the word sits so near ingenious (clever). So the spelling family and the meaning family are not the same any more, and that is why this word and ingenuous keep tripping people.