adjective

• 1Not easily convinced; having doubts or reservations.

  ‘the public were deeply sceptical about some of the proposals’

  More example sentences

  • ‘You do get functionally sceptical and tend to doubt what people tell you.’
  • ‘A very interesting study claims that skeptical consumers are more easily won with emotion.’
  • ‘Although most respondents were enthusiastic or supportive of booking, about a quarter were sceptical or not convinced of its value.’
  • ‘He has managed to convince even the most sceptical among us that Scottish rugby may indeed have a future fit to mirror its glorious past.’
  • ‘Not only does he need to convince a sceptical market, he also has to reach an increasingly disillusioned customer.’
  • ‘Samples of your work can also go a long way to convincing a sceptical customer to buy.’
  • ‘Has his speech convinced a skeptical British public that action is needed, with or without the UN?’
  • ‘Public opinion, already highly skeptical and suspicious of European Institutions, reached new lows.’
  • ‘We live in a world that is rightly suspicious of offers that seem too good to be true; we are often skeptical and even cynical.’
  • ‘Instead of excitement about the project, most people have been left sceptical and suspicious about how the £750m of public money has been spent.’
  • ‘The Prime Minister is sceptical and questions the timing of the new allegations.’
  • ‘My conviction was so strong that I convinced my skeptical high school English teacher by giving him readings and arguing with him.’
  • ‘This has severely hampered the government's efforts to convince those skeptical of the EU to trust it in the matter of the constitution.’
  • ‘It's not easy convincing skeptical bosses to invest in infosecurity programs.’
  • ‘He questions authority and is skeptical of preconceived ideas, offering in their place an objective insight.’
  • ‘He responded to a skeptical question by encouraging us to view his outline as a map.’
  • ‘Some of his best mates are journalists, but generally he is sceptical and distrustful of the media and never saw his role as a background briefer to reporters.’
  • ‘Colleagues were sceptical, his oncologists incredulous.’
  • ‘Experience suggests that the public will remain wisely sceptical on the question.’
  • ‘His legacy is to remind us to be sceptical about science and suspicious of facts.’

  Synonyms

  dubious, doubtful, having reservations, taking something with a pinch of salt, doubting, questioning

  View synonyms
• 2Philosophy
  Relating to the theory that certain knowledge is impossible.

  ‘The Cyrenaics are notable mainly for their empiricist and skeptical epistemology and their sensualist hedonism.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘Accordingly, to deprive us of knowledge, sceptical hypotheses need only to be bare logical possibilities.’
  • ‘If the transcendental philosophy is not a version of Leibnizian rationalism, why is it not a repetition of the sceptical empiricism of Hume?’
  • ‘Some later commentators claim that by making this skeptical turn, Arcesilaus abandoned Platonism.’
  • ‘That is the basic point that skeptical philosophers from Sextus to Nagarjuna to Nietzsche have made for millennia.’