INCREDULOUS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does incredulous mean? 

• INCREDULOUS (adjective)
  The adjective INCREDULOUS has 1 sense:

1. not disposed or willing to believe; unbelieving

  Familiarity information: INCREDULOUS used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• INCREDULOUS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Not disposed or willing to believe; unbelieving

Similar:

disbelieving; sceptical; skeptical; unbelieving (denying or questioning the tenets of especially a religion)

Also:

incredible; unbelievable (beyond belief or understanding)

distrustful (having or showing distrust)

Antonym:

credulous (disposed to believe on little evidence)

Derivation:

incredulity (doubt about the truth of something)

 Context examples 

The public was indignant and incredulous.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Then he shrugged his shoulders with an incredulous smile.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Still I did not answer, and still I writhed myself from his grasp: for I was still incredulous.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Though suspicion was very far from Miss Bennet's general habits, she was absolutely incredulous here.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

I go home, more incredulous than ever, to a lodging that I have hard by; and get up very early in the morning, to ride to the Highgate road and fetch my aunt.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

McArdle looked deeply incredulous.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

My life is shaken to its roots; sleep has left me; the deadliest terror sits by me at all hours of the day and night; and I feel that my days are numbered, and that I must die; and yet I shall die incredulous.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

You may easily believe, said he, how great was the difficulty to persuade my father that all necessary knowledge was not comprised in the noble art of book-keeping; and, indeed, I believe I left him incredulous to the last, for his constant answer to my unwearied entreaties was the same as that of the Dutch schoolmaster in The Vicar of Wakefield: ‘I have ten thousand florins a year without Greek, I eat heartily without Greek.’ But his affection for me at length overcame his dislike of learning, and he has permitted me to undertake a voyage of discovery to the land of knowledge.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

I took my boy to him now, and I found him, as I expected, incredulous as to my guilt, and ready to assist me in any way.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Mrs. Morse laughed with incredulous vexation.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)