Credulous

WORD OF THE DAY

credulous / adjective / KREJ-uh-lus

Definition
1: ready to believe especially on slight or uncertain evidence
2: proceeding from credulity

Examples
"A pair of fraudulent cryptocurrency schemes raked in millions by duping credulous investors, Manhattan and Brooklyn federal prosecutors said Tuesday."
— Noah Goldberg, The Daily News (New York), 9 Mar. 2022

Like the Afghanistan debacle, Theranos is a horror story of wishful thinking, credulous media, and celebrity impunity.
— Samuel Goldman, The Week, 10 Sep. 2021

Did You Know?
It’s easier to give credit to people who adhere to their creed than to give credence to what miscreants say, or for that matter, to find recreants altogether credible.
That sentence contains a half dozen words which, like today’s credulous, are descendants of credere, the Latin verb that means "to believe" or "to trust":
credit ("honor," as well as "belief");
creed ("guiding principle");
credence ("acceptance as true");
miscreant ("a heretic" or a criminal);
recreant ("coward, deserter");
credible ("offering reasonable grounds for being believed").
Credulous is even more closely allied to the nouns credulity and credulousness (both meaning "gullibility"), and of course its antonym, incredulous ("skeptical," also "improbable").