Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Fraught with uncertainty or doubt; undecided.
- adjective Arousing doubt; doubtful.
- adjective Of questionable character.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Doubting; hesitating; wavering or fluctuating in opinion, but inclined to doubt.
- Doubtful; marked by or occasioning doubt or uncertainty; difficult to determine or relieve of uncertainty; not distinct or plain; puzzling: as, a dubious question; a dubious light.
- Of uncertain event or issue: as, a dubious undertaking.
- Liable to doubt or suspicion; of doubtful quality or propriety; questionable: as, a man of dubious character; a dubious transaction; his morals or his methods are dubious. Synonyms Unsettled, undetermined.
- Doubtful, Ambiguous, etc. (see
obscure , a.); questionable, problematical, puzzling.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Doubtful or not settled in opinion; being in doubt; wavering or fluctuating; undetermined.
- adjective Occasioning doubt; not clear, or obvious; equivocal; questionable; doubtful.
- adjective Of uncertain event or issue.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Arousing
doubt ;questionable ; open tosuspicion . - adjective In
disbelief ;wavering , uncertain, or hesitating in opinion; inclined to doubt;undecided .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective open to doubt or suspicion
- adjective fraught with uncertainty or doubt
- adjective not convinced
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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And Dr. Fauci, I know that you would maybe argue, by the way, about the term dubious quality control.
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Citing a number of backdated transactions and what he characterized as dubious documentation the defendants received from
NYT > Home Page By DIANA B. HENRIQUES 2010
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Citing a number of backdated transactions and what he characterized as dubious documentation the defendants received from
NYT > Home Page By DIANA B. HENRIQUES 2010
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Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), raising questions Oscar Cruz yesterday slammed the Arroyo administration for continuously invoking executive privilege over what he called dubious government contracts, the latest
WN.com - Articles related to New Treatments Hold Hope for Failing Eyes 2009
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Of holding Obama in dubious regard, given his facile demonizing tactics and his Alinskyite praxis and wholesale mendacity in general:
The Volokh Conspiracy » Immigrants and Nazis, Communists and Cardinals 2010
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The prosecution team includes at least four prosecutors who have been involved in dubious cases.
Andrew Kreig: U.S. Charges of Alabama Corruption Tainted By Past Federal Misconduct Andrew Kreig 2010
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I'd thought there would, instead, be discussion of Plate XV and a certain dubious bit of film.
Howard Hughes vs. the Amazon Sales Rank mevennen 2009
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The prosecution team includes at least four prosecutors who have been involved in dubious cases.
Andrew Kreig: U.S. Charges of Alabama Corruption Tainted By Past Federal Misconduct Andrew Kreig 2010
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And his general military historical stuff, partly on my own reading and partly on the opinions of people I respect, is occasionally interesting, but too often boiler plate wrapped in dubious generalizations, particularly in areas where he has no personal expertise such as the Aztecs and medieval Japan. levitra Says:
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This could occur for individual employees implicated either in dubious judgment significantly below the criminal level or in multiple instances of near-dubious judgment.
David Isenberg: Putting the Contract in Private Security Contractors David Isenberg 2010
hernesheir commented on the word dubious
Irish dubh dark, black. Hence, doubtful?
January 8, 2009
chained_bear commented on the word dubious
OED etymology of dubious is:
ad. L. dubis-us doubtful, f. dubium doubt, neuter of dubius doubtful.
Etymology of doubtful as a noun is:
ME. a. Of. dute, dote, doute, vbl. n. f. douter to DOUBT. The spelling doute, dought, arose from the spoken identity, which per contra caused DOUGHTY to be spelt doubty. As to the mod. spelling with b, see DOUBT v.
As a verb is:
ME. duten, douten, a. OF. duter, doter, douter, (14-16th c. also doubter):L. dubitre to waver in opinion, hesitate, related to dubius wavering to and fro, DUBIOUS. The normal 14th c. forms in Fr. and Eng. were douter, doute; the influence of Latin caused these to be artificially spelt doubt-, which in 17th c. was again abandoned in Fr., but retained in Eng.
Branch II ‘to fear, to be in fear’, a development of the verb in OF., was an early and very prominent sense of the vb. and its derivatives in ME.: cf. also REDOUBT, etc
Doesn't look like any of them come from Gaelic.
January 8, 2009
qroqqa commented on the word dubious
And the Latin root dub- is probably from a contraction of du- "two" + hab- "have", i.e. "be in two minds".
January 8, 2009