Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

sceptical

UK/ˈskɛptɪkəl/US/ˈskɛptɪkəl/
adjectiveC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,928 of 15,258neutral

Sceptical means doubting whether a claim is true. Not refusing to believe — waiting to be convinced.

It takes about or of. The word describes a stance rather than a conclusion, which is why science treats it as a virtue and salespeople treat it as an obstacle. British English spells it with a c and American English with a k. The noun is scepticism and the person is a sceptic. It is worth keeping apart from cynical, which assumes bad motives rather than merely doubting evidence.

Definitions of sceptical

  1. 1adjectivescepticalDoubtful about whether something is true or worthwhile.C1

    “She remained sceptical about the whole scheme.”

Also accepted in games: skeptical

Where it comes from

by surface analysis, sceptic + -al.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 1 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

sceptical in the wild

  • The skeptical movement (British spelling: sceptical movement) is a contemporary social movement based on the idea of scientific skepticism.

    Scientific skepticism

  • New Humanist is a British current affairs magazine, published by Humanists UK and based in London, that focuses on culture, news, philosophy, and science from a sceptical perspective.

    New Humanist

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.