Other forms: doubts, doubted, doubting
Doubt is the small pause before you believe something. You look at the black sky, then at the app promising sunshine, and you doubt it. A friend swears the bus comes every ten minutes; twenty minutes later, at an empty stop, you have your doubts.
Doubt is a verb as well as a noun, and the verb is the one you will reach for most: I doubt it, I doubt he'll come, I doubt whether the money will arrive before Friday. Said on its own, I doubt it is how English says no politely. In the plural, doubts are the ones you carry about with you and can put into words — she had doubts about the whole plan and finally voiced them. Watch the grammar: you doubt something, or doubt that something is true, but you have doubts about it. The phrases are everywhere too — no doubt, beyond reasonable doubt, cast doubt on the figures, give somebody the benefit of the doubt. And the b is silent, in every form of the word.
1verbdoubtTo think that something is probably not true, or probably will not happen.~18%
“I doubt the shop is still open at this hour.”
synonyms: question, disbelieve
2nounnounThe feeling that something may not be true or may go wrong.~80%
“A small doubt stayed with her all evening.”
synonyms: uncertainty, hesitation
3verbdistrustTo distrust somebody, or to disbelieve what they tell you.~2%
“Nobody doubted the witness; they simply wanted proof.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 140 sentences found in the wild and placed 76 of them on a sense (64 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Latin dubitō meant to waver, to be unable to settle. One account builds it out of dubius, doubtful, and behind that duo, two, plus habeō, to hold — to doubt is to hold a thing two ways at once. The b in the English spelling is a piece of showing off: early modern spelling reformers put it in to point at the Latin, and no English speaker has ever pronounced it.
Proto-Indo-European
*gʰeh₁bʰ-
Middle English
douten
English, today
doubt
Built from
From Middle English douten. The verb is derived from Middle English douten (“to doubt, fear, worry”)doubt, doubten, dought, doughten, douti, douʒte, dut, duten, duti, from Old French douter, doter, duter (compare Middle French doubter), from Latin dubitō (“to be uncertain, doubt; to hesitate, waver in coming to an opinion; to consider, ponder”); the further etymology is uncertain, but one theory is that dubitō may be derived from dubius (“fluctuating, wavering; doubtful, dubious, uncertain”), from duhibius (“held as two”), from duo (“two”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European dwóh₁ (“two”)) + habeō (“to have, hold”) (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European gʰeh₁bʰ- (“to grab, take”)). Spelling reformers of the early modern period added the letter b to reflect the Latin root dubitō, but it has never been pronounced in English. The noun is derived from Middle English dout, doute (“uncertainty, hesitation; questionable point; anxiety, fear, reverence”)dewt, dote, doubt, doubte, dought, doughte, douthe, douʒte, douȝt, douȝte, dowght, dowt, dowte, dut, dute,
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA