Word.ws English Dictionary

skeptical

/ˈskɛptɪkəl/

skeptical adjective: having, or expressing doubt; questioning.

skeptical: a close up of a cat laying on a bed
Photo by fr0ggy5 on Unsplash

Adjective

skeptical (comparative more skeptical, superlative most skeptical)

  1. (US) Having, or expressing doubt; questioning.
    • My teacher was skeptical when I told her my dog ate my homework.
    • Tom was skeptical when Paul told him that he saw Bigfoot.
  2. (US) Of or relating to philosophical skepticism or the skeptics.

skeptical meaning in Bengali, Malayalam and Arabic

skeptical in Bengali

সংশয়ী, সন্দেহপ্রবণ

skeptical in Malayalam

സംശയദൃഷ്ടിയോടെയുള്ളത്

skeptical in Arabic

related to skepticism
شُكُوكِيّ šukūkiyy

Examples of skeptical in a sentence

  • When viewed through a severely skeptical monocle it can look like occult numberwang.
  • The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is skeptical: The Republican Party has gone authoritarian.
  • It seems that the skeptical challenges, though theoretically unimpeachable, have objectionable practical consequences.

All 34 example sentences with skeptical

Forms of skeptical

comparativemore skeptical
superlativemost skeptical
alternative UKsceptical

Origin of skeptical

From Latin scepticus + -al; attested earlier than skeptic. By surface analysis, skeptic + -al.

Words formed from skeptical

Questions about skeptical

What does skeptical mean?
Skeptical means having, or expressing doubt; questioning.
What is skeptical in Bengali?
Skeptical in Bengali is সংশয়ী, সন্দেহপ্রবণ. See Skeptical meaning in Bengali.
What part of speech is skeptical?
Skeptical is an adjective.
How do you pronounce skeptical?
Skeptical is pronounced /ˈskɛptɪkəl/.

Words near skeptical in the dictionary

  1. skeppunds
  2. skeps
  3. skepsful
  4. skepsis
  5. skeptic
  6. skeptical
  7. skepticality
  8. skeptically
  9. skepticalness
  10. skepticise
  11. skepticised

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: skeptical (page history and authors); skeptical (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); skeptical (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-skeptical.wav.

Cite this entry: “skeptical.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/skeptical. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.