skeptical
UK spellingsceptical
- 1Having or expressing doubt; inclined to question claims rather than accept them at face value.
Like a juror who withholds a verdict until every piece of evidence is in.
Scientists remained skeptical of the new theory until the data were replicated.
He gave the politician's apology a skeptical look and said nothing.
Similardoubtful, dubious, unconvinced, suspicious, incredulous
Oppositeconvinced, credulous, trusting, gullible
Note
This is the American spelling of the everyday, doubting sense, with a k where Latin scepticus has a c; British writing usually keeps the c, as in sceptical. The doubt typically takes of or about (skeptical of the new theory, skeptical about him), and it can describe a settled outlook, as when many scientists remain skeptical, or a single wary look.
- 2Relating to philosophical skepticism, or to the school of philosophers known as the skeptics.
Ancient skeptical philosophers argued that we should suspend judgment on questions we cannot settle.
The thesis traces a skeptical tradition running from Pyrrho to the modern empiricists.
Note
Here the word names a position rather than a mood: the stance of Pyrrho and the Academic and Pyrrhonist schools. They held that claims to knowledge call for suspension of judgment, epochē, rather than firm assent. A skeptical argument in this sense need not sound doubtful; it questions whether we can know at all. Unlike the everyday doubting sense, it mostly sits before nouns: a skeptical tradition, skeptical philosophers.
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Origin
This word comes from Latin "scepticus" combined with the suffix "-al," and it was actually recorded earlier than the noun "skeptic." On the surface, it can be analyzed as "skeptic" plus "-al."