Like the rest of these words, naïve suggests either a candid simplicity or a lack of urbanity. The word also suggests a trusting innocence that has not yet been tested; naïve ideals may be appealingly or exasperatingly out of touch with hard facts, but a naïve person is not necessarily stupid, only limited in experience. Unsophisticated is more specific than naïve in suggesting a lack of worldliness, whether one is experienced or inexperienced; the word may be used as praise or as criticism, depending on the user’s attitude towards urbanity: a plain, unsophisticated man who can say a lot in a few word; so unsophisticated they didn’t how what a black-tie dinner was. Unlike naïve , unsophisticated does not necessarily imply a willingness to trust: sideshow spruikers who misjudged as naïve their unsophisticated but hard-headed audience. In this context, provincial suggests lack of exposure to experience, like naïve , but implies most specifically a life remote from any metropolis or one sheltered from fashionable taste and ideas: provincial clodhoppers who guffawed at seeing male ballet dancers wearing tights. Provincial , in emphasizing remoteness of place, need not suggest innocence: Emily Dickinson and the Brontës were provincial but hardly naïve . Rude suggests an extremely unformed taste or character, possibly as a result of a provincial life. Besides suggesting ill-manners it comes near suggesting uncivilized and illiterate, except in rare instances of positive use: a rude but honest and stalwart people.

The remaining words deal with the manner in which rude , provincial , naïve or unsophisticated people might behave. Ingenuous is closest to naïve in suggesting someone who is excessively confiding, unsubtle or unwary. Unlike naïve , this need not result from a lack of experience. It may be used in a positive sense: the sweetly ingenuous child. It may also be used critically: so ingenuous as to give away your secrets to everyone at the slightest prompting.

Unaffected refers to unpretentious manners or spontaneous informality. While this word is exclusively positive in tone, what one person might consider rude behaviour, another might think unaffected . Also unaffected manners might be considered the very mark of urbanity, whereas provincial , naïve , or unsophisticated people, by putting on airs unnatural to them, might exemplify the very opposite of unaffected conduct. Guileless , like unaffected , is wholly favourable in tone, but it refers less to the contrast between informality and formality than to a simple lack of deceitfulness or cunning; a person with pretentious manners might still be guileless . Nor does the word necessarily suggest trusting unwariness like naïve or the eagerness to share confidences like ingenuous . Aside from its stress on honesty, guileless says rather less about a person than these other words. Similarly, both an urbane person and a provincial or unsophisticated one might or might not be guileless , but their way of evincing this quality or lack of it would differ markedly.

Artless once unambiguously referred, very like unaffected , to a winningly open and spontaneous manner. This meaning may still be intended, with its implied absence of all artifice and formality as mere contrivance, but it may now often be used to mean ungraceful or awkward: a radiantly artless smile; the artless hostess who stumbled over every introduction. Unless context makes clear which meaning is intended, the word should be avoided.