How to Use disingenuous in a Sentence

disingenuous

adjective
  • Her recent expressions of concern are self-serving and disingenuous.
  • This was disingenuous, of course—and that’s a kind way of putting it.
    — John Cassidy, The New Yorker, 6 Sep. 2019
  • Farewell shows tend to be slathered with treacle, full of disingenuous praise.
    — Jack Dickey, SI.com, 15 Dec. 2017
  • Calling any other song their finest hour would be disingenuous at best.
    — Ed Masley, AZCentral.com, 21 Nov. 2025
  • In the course of the next eleven hundred pages, this sales pitch starts to seem a little disingenuous.
    — Gideon Lewis-Kraus, New Yorker, 24 Nov. 2025
  • If this was the case, then this strikes us as disingenuous marketing.
    — Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica, 7 Sep. 2018
  • Gone are the days of fake or disingenuous social media posts.
    — Silvia Mah, Forbes, 17 Mar. 2021
  • But to say there has been no investment would be disingenuous.
    — Megan Feringa, New York Times, 30 Mar. 2026
  • Without sounding disingenuous, this call kind of felt out of left field.
    — Andy Greene, Rolling Stone, 2 Mar. 2022
  • The source says some show the disingenuous nature of the effort.
    — Beth Bailey, FOXNews.com, 16 May 2025
  • Now There's a disingenuous both-sides-ism to just about every idea the game puts forth.
    — Joshua Rivera, GQ, 2 Apr. 2018
  • To some observers, this seemed disingenuous, a case of the film trying to have its cake and eat it, too.
    — Nate Jones, Vulture, 16 Mar. 2026
  • This practice is disingenuous as these surcharge fees are not meant to be reversed or come off.
    — Jennifer Vangrove, The Mercury News, 14 June 2024
  • That would only confirm the disingenuous nature of some of these pledges in the first place.
    — David Oyelowo, The Hollywood Reporter, 7 Apr. 2022
  • There was a hunger for attention and fame in some instances that felt disingenuous.
    — Addie Morfoot, Variety, 12 Mar. 2025
  • That would be disingenuous, but maybe limit it to a joke at the top of the show and then one midshow callback?
    — Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 2 Mar. 2018
  • To think that they would be totally healed would be disingenuous and not accurate to how friends are.
    — Los Angeles Times, 24 Oct. 2021
  • And yet to describe the mood as optimistic would be disingenuous.
    — Sebastian Stafford-Bloor, New York Times, 26 June 2026
  • This sounded like two men (and a creative team) who chose to be disingenuous in order to make that happen.
    — Soraya Roberts, Longreads, 19 July 2019
  • But there’s a lot of conflating of problems and some of the critiques feel disingenuous.
    — Stuart Miller, Los Angeles Times, 22 Nov. 2022
  • To me, his complaints sound disingenuous.
    — R. Eric Thomas, Denver Post, 12 Jan. 2026
  • This, in turn, might come off as disingenuous and cause the public to distrust influencers.
    — Expert Panel, Forbes, 31 Aug. 2021
  • So to pretend that the game was somehow pure in one era and impure in another is disingenuous.
    — Jay Jaffe, SI.com, 7 Aug. 2017
  • And the idea of kind of just resolving it in an episode feels disingenuous to the experience.
    — Carly Thomas, The Hollywood Reporter, 5 Dec. 2023
  • Getting distracted by a late-stage bombshell would feel disingenuous at this point.
    — Kathryn Vanarendonk, Vulture, 1 July 2026
  • There’s a question bubbling just beneath the surface that’s disingenuous not to pose.
    — Jon Wertheim, SI.com, 7 Feb. 2018
  • But the Houthis response has been ambiguous at best, disingenuous at worst.
    — Nic Robertson, Nada Bashir and Charbel Mallo, CNN, 23 Apr. 2021
  • Cloaking them as something good for your skin health is totally disingenuous.
    — Lucy Abbersteen, Refinery29, 19 Aug. 2025
  • Still, her doubts come out of nowhere, which feels not only disingenuous to the character, but to the audience as well.
    — Courtney Howard, Variety, 31 Oct. 2024
  • The story shows what happens when Nala becomes trapped by a web of lies and disingenuous falsehoods.
    — NBC News, 19 Feb. 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'disingenuous.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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