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Acuity is sharpness or clearness of vision, hearing, or thought.
Acumen is the ability to make quick decisions and keen, precise judgments.
When you describe someone as astute, you think they quickly understand situations or behavior and use it to their advantage.
Someone who is callow is young, immature, and inexperienced; consequently, they possess little knowledge of the world.
If you are chary of doing something, you are cautious or timid about doing it because you are afraid that something bad will happen.
If you are circumspect, you are cautious; you think carefully about something before saying or doing it.
When you dupe another person, you trick them into believing something that is not true.
If you accuse someone of duplicity, you think that they are dishonest and are intending to trick you.
Empirical evidence or study is based on real experience or scientific experiments rather than on unproven theories.
If you think something, such as a statement or idea, is fatuous, you consider it stupid or extremely silly; a fatuous hope is unrealistic.
A gullible person is easy to trick because they are too trusting of other people.
Something that is implausible is unlikely to be true or hard to believe that it’s true.
If you describe someone’s behavior as inane, you think it is completely stupid or without much meaning.
If an idea or thought is incisive, it is expressed in a penetrating and knowledgeable manner that is clear and brief; additionally, it can demonstrate impressive understanding of related ideas or thoughts.
People who are ingenuous are excessively trusting and believe almost everything that people tell them, especially because they have not had much life experience.
If someone is naive, they are too trusting of others; they don’t have enough experience in life to know whom to believe.
A neophyte is a person who is just beginning to learn a subject or skill—or how to do an activity of some kind.
If someone is objective, they base their opinions on facts rather than personal feelings or beliefs.
Someone who demonstrates perspicacity notices or understands things very quickly.
A sagacious person is wise, intelligent, and has the ability to make good practical decisions.
A skeptic is a person who doubts popular claims or facts about things that other people believe to be true.
A tyro has just begun learning something.
Wiles are clever tricks or cunning schemes that are used to persuade someone to do what you want.
Adj.
credulous
KREJ-uh-luhs
Context
Caroline was a credulous or trusting person—she readily believed what anyone told her. Her accepting or credulous nature caused some problems when acquaintances asked her for money because she always granted their requests without any hesitation. Her brother Jack could not believe what his sister was doing; he warned her to stop being so credulous or ready to believe that people would return the money she had loaned them. Despite Jack’s warnings, Caroline kept her credulous and unquestioning ways . . . and within a year she was added to the numbers of those declaring bankruptcy.
Quiz:Try again!
What is an example of a credulous person?
Someone who avoids saying things that aren’t true.
Someone who believes everything they are told.
Someone who tries to always see the positive side of things.
Lousy Credentials Although the teacher had lousy credentials, the credulous Headmaster hired him anyway because he trusted that Hubert would make a turnaround and because he could pay Hubert a low salary, which was a huge mistake because the teacher was so bad that several parents took their children out of the school.
Examples
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
— Bertrand Russell, Welsh-born British philosopher and Nobel laureate, from _Unpopular Essays_
Hard-line defenders of conventional medicine say any practices that can’t be formally tested should be disqualified right off, and that the commission was stacked with alternative medicine advocates too credulous to be trusted to make policy recommendations.
—
Newsweek
Someone who is credulous has the “nature of trusting or believing” what others say too much of the time.
Word Theater
A Bit of Fry and Laurie A young Hugh Laurie credulously thinks he's in a doctor's office.
The panel shows a small video clip of either the word in actual use or a scene that represents the meaning of a word. This not only breaks up the monotony of studying words but also provides another avenue to strengthen word meaning. Enjoy!
Word Constellation
Click for an interactive map of this word
Related Words
callow ·
dupe+ ·
fatuous ·
gullible ·
inane ·
ingenuous ·
naive+ ·
neophyte ·
tyro ·
acuity ·
acumen ·
astute ·
chary ·
circumspect ·
duplicity ·
empirical ·
implausible+ ·
incisive ·
objective ·
perspicacity ·
sagacious ·
skeptic ·
wile ·
Similar sense
Opposite sense
Word Variants
incredulous
adj
→
not believing in the truth or possibility of something
credulity
n
→
the tendency to believe something too readily
The section lists important variants and alternate definitions of the headword. Knowing variants will often help you both remember and understand the word. Not all variants are listed - only the ones we think that are important for you to know.
