naively

• naïfly
• naïvely

From naive +‎ -ly.

• IPA^(key): /naɪˈivli/

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naively (comparative more naively, superlative most naively)

1. In a naive manner.
   • 1881, Helen Hunt Jackson, chapter V, in A Century of Dishonor:

     The order was written. In less than ten days everything was "on wheels" and the whole body of these Sioux [was] on the move to the country they had indicated, and the Secretary of the Interior says, naively, in his report for 1868, "The Indians were found to be quite determined to move westward, and the promise of the government in that respect was faithfully kept."

   • 1982, John Cassidy, The Hacky-Sack Book, page 22:

     At this point there may possibly be a few readers who naively expect that they will somehow be held exempt from this law of universal klutzhood. Not for them the indignities of life as a bungling beginner.

   • 1989 December 24, Elizabeth Pincus, “Screwball Glitz And Revolt Against Misogyny”, in Gay Community News, volume 17, number 24, page 16:

     There are too many gratuitous and insulting characters, like Mary Fisher's employee, a stereotyped Latino stud, and the old people in a nursing home who are presented as unindividuated and naively happy.

   • 1997, Harold Raley, A Watch Over Mortality: The Philosophical Story of Julian Marias, →ISBN, page 145:

     They naively (or is it narrowmindedly?) believe that the unpardonable sin of past eras was not having twentieth-century thoughts.

   • 2019, Eli Valley, “A Springtime of Erasure”, in Jewish Currents, number Fall 2019, page 14:

     When Trump's election pulled back the curtain on the rise of the far-right in America, I'd naively assumed the Jewish left would be vindicated.