gullible
pronunciation
How to pronounce gullible in British English:
UK [ˈgʌləbl]
How to pronounce gullible in American English:
US [ˈɡʌləbəl]
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- Adjective:
- naive and easily deceived or tricked
- easily tricked because of being too trusting
Word Origin
- gullible
- gullible: [19] Gullible is a derivative of the now archaic gull ‘dupe’, itself a verbal use of the noun gull ‘gullible person, simpleton’. This appears to have been a figurative extension of an earlier gull ‘newly hatched bird’ [14], which survived dialectally into the late 19th century, and was itself perhaps a noun use of the obsolete adjective gull ‘yellow’ (borrowed from Old Norse gulr and still extant in Swedish and Danish gul ‘yellow’). Some etymologists, however, derive the noun gull ‘simpleton’ from an obsolete verb gull ‘swallow’ [16], which goes back ultimately to Old French gole, goule ‘throat’ (source of English gullet).
- gullible (adj.)
- 1821, apparently a back-formation from gullibility. Spelling gullable is attested from 1818.
Synonym
Example
- 1. Both scrambled to find gullible investors on whom to dump the problem .
- 2. It 's a very unfortunate story , and it doesn 't involve me being the gullible treasurer of a uk local authority .
- 3. Was he greedy , or gullible , or stubbornly blind to the truth ?
- 4. And in the years that followed , an urban legend arose , warning gullible types that the number 666 was hidden in each bar code .
- 5. The witnesses to jesus christ who wrote the new testament gospels and letters are not gullible or deceitful or demented .