incredible
- 1Extraordinary enough to cause amazement; amazingly good, great, or large.
The team's comeback in the final minutes was incredible.
Visitors describe the cathedral's vaulted interior as absolutely incredible.
UsageA strong word, so it is usually boosted with absolutely, truly or really rather than very: absolutely incredible.
Note
Hyperbole turned into meaning: what is too much to believe became what is too much to take in. Unbelievable made the same shift, and the two are near-interchangeable here. The reaction is astonishment at scale or spectacle, such as incredible special effects or an incredible comeback. It can also simply praise something as excellent, like an incredible slice of pizza that nobody doubts was real.
Checked 6 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- The amazing sense of incredible is a hyperbolic extension of its literal meaning. fr.wiktionary.org
- Unbelievable has the corresponding figurative extension from disbelief to amazement. en.wiktionary.org
- 2Too implausible to be believed; beyond what one can accept as true.
The witness offered an incredible account that the jury dismissed outright.
Sales figures that high seemed incredible to the auditors.
UsageDon't confuse it with incredulous, which describes the person who doubts: an incredible story, an incredulous jury.
Similarunbelievable
Oppositebelievable, credible
Note
Writers often signal this reading, as Diarmaid MacCulloch does in A History of Christianity (2009) with "incredible in a literal sense," so it is not mistaken for the "amazing" meaning. Richard Feynman's "almost incredible lack of communication" shows that it readily takes degree words.
Practice
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Origin
Latin crēdō ("believe") gave crēdibilis ("worthy of belief"), and adding in- ("not") to that produced incrēdibilis ("that cannot be believed"), which Middle English took over as incredible.