How to Use guileless in a Sentence

guileless

adjective
  • The books have the guileless charm of club-notes.
    — New York Times, 16 Oct. 2025
  • The child is as smart and cunning as Dunk is thick and guileless.
    — Lorraine Ali, Los Angeles Times, 16 Jan. 2026
  • Never trust a baby chick, not even the most downy and guileless.
    — Scott Harrison, latimes.com, 12 June 2018
  • Love songs for Grantham shape nearly half the album, gentle and guileless tunes that glow.
    — Grayson Haver Currin, New York Times, 10 May 2023
  • Some of the gun unit’s misdeeds would test the credence of even the most guileless readers of crime fiction.
    — Timothy Williams, New York Times, 6 Feb. 2018
  • Some of the gun unit's misdeeds would test the credence of even the most guileless readers of crime fiction.
    — Author: Timothy Williams, Anchorage Daily News, 7 Feb. 2018
  • Evert glanced up and saw a new girl approaching, pale and plump as a dumpling, with a guileless face beneath a mop of hair.
    — Sally Jenkins, Anchorage Daily News, 3 July 2023
  • Stories aimed for young readers are often guileless, seeking fun for fun's sake.
    — Mary Cadden, USA TODAY, 26 June 2017
  • The Jewish press does not see Abbas as such a guileless figure.
    — Ruth Margalit, The New Yorker, 25 Oct. 2021
  • Her Dora is utterly guileless, open, happy and lacks any trace of irony.
    — Randy Cordova, Detroit Free Press, 8 Aug. 2019
  • Molly is sincere and guileless, a true foil for steely and withering Katherine.
    — Barbara Vandenburgh, azcentral, 10 June 2019
  • And was there ever a more perfect person to play this guileless, sweetly kooky role than Fred Armisen?
    — Debby Wolfinsohn, EW.com, 6 Mar. 2024
  • Ardies plays Hulda, a guileless girl, full of excitement at the prospect of womanhood.
    — Jackie Strause, HollywoodReporter, 6 Dec. 2025
  • Goldsberry is both funny, guileless, and dear, and ends the show with a kind of light wave, a gentle gesture for what turns out to be a very good night.
    — Frank Rizzo, Variety, 23 Dec. 2024
  • But there are other moments where like the goofy, guileless, unguarded teen of ten years ago seems to suddenly reappear.
    — Chris Willman, chicagotribune.com, 9 May 2018
  • But her star rose and that joyful, beautiful, rather guileless young woman trying to stay cool in a hot city summer lives forever.
    — Daniel D'addario, Variety, 1 June 2026
  • With her rosy cheeks, wide eyes, and frothy wardrobe, Fanning can look absolutely guileless one second and blood-hungry the next.
    — Rachel Syme, The New Yorker, 18 June 2020
  • Jerry is a guileless family man with 13 children and eight funeral homes.
    — Peter Debruge, Variety, 11 Sep. 2023
  • Evan Kokkila Schumacher has the perfect wide-eyed, guileless and passive face for the role of the robot.
    — Joanne Engelhardt, The Mercury News, 25 Jan. 2017
  • And yet the track that perhaps best represents Orange’s guileless spirit is the one tune here Presley didn’t write.
    — Stuart Berman, Pitchfork, 29 Apr. 2026
  • For now, though, Rue looks truly happy, smiling an unencumbered, guileless smile.
    — Daniel D'addario, Variety, 1 June 2026
  • Her Sandra can be vivid and elusive, warm and guarded, calculating and oddly guileless.
    — Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times, 13 Oct. 2023
  • Mickey 17 is as guileless as Candide, while his successor is more aggressive and shifty-eyed.
    — Tom Gliatto, People.com, 7 Mar. 2025
  • At the start of the season, Ruth, in a guileless effort to advocate for her coworkers, appeals to Sam.
    — Rachel Vorona Cote, The New Republic, 28 June 2018
  • One of the many artist friends for whom his poor, guileless Mildred served as patron was a struggling young writer named Harold Vanner.
    — Jonathan Dee, Harper's Magazine, 11 May 2022
  • Taylor’s voice, as guileless and elegant as ever, ties together what could have been a random-feeling assemblage of tunes in a silky bow.
    — Molly Mary O’Brien, Pitchfork, 14 Mar. 2026
  • The whole idea of a tourist attraction built as a guileless ode to love, and shrine to a Slovak poem, may strike you, at first blush, as defying both rhyme and reason.
    — Sam Roberts, New York Times, 12 Feb. 2024
  • Bratty, guileless Toni and Shakira emerged victorious, of course.
    — Lillian Fishman, New Yorker, 27 June 2026
  • Now, nearly 50 years later, the Shaggs are a paragon of guileless, unfiltered outsider music.
    — David Patrick Stearns, Philly.com, 28 July 2017
  • In the scrum of literature about the Kennedys and their satellites, the wives, saddled with the heavy work of making the family grow, Beller’s book is guileless.
    — Doreen St. Félix, New Yorker, 14 Feb. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'guileless.' 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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