skeptic
/ˈskɛp.tɪk/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.89 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Someone who doubts beliefs, claims, plans, etc. that are accepted by others as true or appropriate, especially one who habitually does so.
American usage
Example Sentences
- "But for the fly he might have made me think He had been at his poetry , comparing Nailhead with fly and fly with huckleberry : How like a fly , how very like a fly . But the real fly he missed would never do ; The missed fly made me dangerously skeptic.[…]"
- "The official account of this meeting was that it ended in failure, with the Taliban's mullah Omar telling General Ahmed, “Osama will be the last person to leave Afghanistan.” The 9/11 skeptics believe that meeting was meant to fail."
- "Even skeptics of the policy acknowledge that the Army conducted an exemplary insourcing program that successfully counteracted the Comptroller's budget ..."
- "The Buddha's perfect body is particularly important in these tropes, and it serves to persuade skeptics of his claims to ultimate authority."
- "Skeptics of this alliance were proven right because this partnership lasted only for a few years. Once Albania broke off diplomatic relations […]"
- "This view of the Great Pyramid is being adopted by a widening circle of Christian believers, until even a skeptic scientist has dignified it as “the religion of the Pyramid!”"
Etymology
Borrowed from Middle French sceptique (but with a pronunciation closer to that of the Latin etymon), or possibly directly from Late Latin scepticus (originally attested only in the plural Scepticī (“the sect of Skeptics”)), from Proto-Italic *spektos (“see, observing”), from *speḱ- (“to see”), compare to σκοπέω (skopéō, “to view, examine”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *speḱ-, sceptique, scepticus, *spektos
Usage
- American usage
Inflected Forms
skeptics (plural)
sceptic (alternative, UK)
sceptick (alternative, obsolete)
skeptick (alternative, obsolete)
more skeptic (comparative)
most skeptic (superlative)