Word of the Day

: May 29, 2011

credulous

adjective KREJ-uh-lus

What It Means

1 : ready to believe especially on slight or uncertain evidence

2 : proceeding from credulity

credulous in Context

Because she is by nature credulous, Ivy didn’t question Bill’s assertion that the castle they stood in had been built in England and shipped across the English Channel to France.

"Koolhoven's philosophical probing of human limitation among the good guys -- and of what that complexity might mean to a credulous lad hungry for role models -- is all but overwhelmed by his commercial instincts and undeniable skill at juggling realism with genre." -- From a movie review by Ella Taylor in The Village Voice, March 16, 2011

Did You Know?

It’s easier to give credit to people who adhere to their creed than to give credence to what miscreants say, or for that matter, to find recreants altogether credible. That sentence contains a half dozen words which, like today’s "credulous," are descendants of "credere," the Latin verb that means "to believe" or "to trust": "credit" ("honor," as well as "belief"); "creed" ("guiding principle"); "credence" ("acceptance as true"); "miscreant" ("a heretic" or "a criminal"); "recreant" ("coward, deserter"); and "credible" ("offering reasonable grounds for being believed"). "Credulous" is even more closely allied to the nouns "credulity" and "credulousness" (both meaning "gullibility"), and of course its antonym, "incredulous" ("skeptical," also "improbable").