What's the difference between childlike and credulous?

Childlike


Definition:

  • (a.) Resembling a child, or that which belongs to children; becoming a child; meek; submissive; dutiful.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It seemed to me watching the film that the concept of the cloud was another great piece of airy obfuscation on the part of the internet corporations, who like to peddle the childlike and the playful in the way that banks used to flog you credit cards called Smile and Egg and Marbles and Goldfish, to encourage you not to think too hard about the small print (what could possibly go wrong?).
  • (2) But this was still very much hero worship, northern-style: the 100 or so Werder Bremen fans stood in orderly rows in the Bremen airport arrivals hall in early September, strictly behind the barrier, of course, and many of them carried smiles that were equal parts genuine, childlike excitement and self-deprecating mocking of their own genuine, childlike excitement, a way to cope with the sense of wonderment: are we really here?
  • (3) And it's important to understand the difference between being childlike and being childish.
  • (4) A story of childlike simplicity that would pose the big questions.
  • (5) Josie Long Watching Josie Long evolve from purveyor of childlike whimsy to political agitator has been one of the pleasures of the last few festivals.
  • (6) In a shocked state, with our understanding of the world badly shaken, a great many of us can become childlike and passive, and overly trusting of people who are only too happy to abuse that trust.
  • (7) It isn't just her size – she is 4ft 11in, and has the tiniest hands I've seen of anyone over the age of eight – that makes her seem childlike; she also has an openness and cheerful excitability, and not a trace of cynicism.
  • (8) This is the martyrdom of an entire sex and it is foolish and childlike, made by babes.
  • (9) Umar, a childlike 30-year-old from Rebo with a maniacal laugh, was diving for tin in exactly the same manner when his four metre-deep underwater ditch collapsed around him, knocking away his mask and air tube.
  • (10) "He's quite childlike," he says, in awe of the musician he met on the road in Japan in 2002.
  • (11) It's a quintessentially childlike sensibility, and one we could all use a bit more of.
  • (12) Dan Kanemitsu, a manga translator, accused de Boer-Buquicchio of “mixing reality with fiction”, adding that there was a difference between abusive images featuring actual children and depictions of childlike characters in manga.
  • (13) Six psychosocial transactional patterns--negativistic, attention centering, distracting, childlike, attractive, and self-punishing--are identified.
  • (14) The second definition highlights followers of a certain hipster culture, which revels in a childlike naivety; the films of Wes Anderson , the early books of Dave Eggers , and the twee indie pop of Belle and Sebastian are all mentioned.
  • (15) It was almost childlike – he was always putting people into different jobs.” For all that he was a remote figure who found it difficult to trust people, Prince provoked a store of good memories in Poole.
  • (16) Acquiring cross-cultural sensitivity involves regression to childlike openness for new values, attitudes, and behaviors.
  • (17) Scott was drawn to the early Italians and to the primitive realism of the Cornish painters Christopher Wood and Alfred Wallis – he had a lifelong interest in childlike art, "the beauty of the thing being badly done".
  • (18) In a prospective study the psychomotor development up to the end of the second year of life of 409 preterm and term newborn infants was examined in order to identify which optimality score might be associated with disturbances of normal childlike development.
  • (19) Her parents Jenny Slate comes from a family of funny voices: hers is childlike, her mother's is deep, and her father's is high and delicate.
  • (20) In particular, they do not realise that an artist is childlike, not childish.

Credulous


Definition:

  • (a.) Apt to believe on slight evidence; easily imposed upon; unsuspecting.
  • (a.) Believed too readily.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) When President Obama stands up and says - as he did when he addressed the nation in February 2011 about Libya - that "the United States will continue to stand up for freedom, stand up for justice, and stand up for the dignity of all people", it should trigger nothing but a scornful fit of laughter, not credulous support (by the way, not that anyone much cares any more, but here's what is happening after the Grand Success of the Libya Intervention: "Tribal and historical loyalties still run deep in Libya, which is struggling to maintain central government control in a country where armed militia wield real power and meaningful systems of law and justice are lacking after the crumbling of Gaddafi's eccentric personal rule").
  • (2) With much of the work supposed to be completed by December, it is stretching credulity to believe that much more than token consultations with patient groups can take place.
  • (3) This leads to the paradoxical result that some of our most famous and successful journalists are also the profession's most credulous sycophants.
  • (4) When 11,000 jobs and a lot of pensions are at risk over the collapse of the ailing store group from which he extracted £586 m, let’s not waste any more time on King Phil (I’ve informally stripped him of his knighthood), his hurt feelings or embarrassingly vulgar yachts, except to say that – yet again – that Tony Blair was a credulous sucker for a rich man with tax-shy habits.
  • (5) It doesn't exactly stretch credulity, however, to recognize that banks provide bonuses to the best producers – whether they produce derivatives, mortgages or foreclosures.
  • (6) Given the inertia on even the most modest legislative response to the mass murder of schoolchildren, those still credulous enough to believe that our governance is representative of popular will are either Barnum-sized suckers, or worse, tacit participants in tragedies soon to come.
  • (7) Credulous voters will agree and feel placated, but in actuality, such measures will make little if any difference.
  • (8) The Crown Prosecution Service should not be so credulous in future.” But the CPS expressed satisfaction with the outcome of the trial.
  • (9) I think he’s a dangerous manchild with an army of credulous misogynists at his disposal.
  • (10) Pretending that the government's current forecasts and plans are certain and reliable, when the ones made only three years ago turned out to be anything but, stretches credulity.
  • (11) What we see is not meritocracy at work at all, but a wealth grab by a nepotistic executive class that sets its own salaries, tests credulity with its ridiculous demands, and discovers that credulity is an amenable customer.
  • (12) The boy insists he is not among the stone-throwers, an assertion that stretches credulity.
  • (13) It strains credulity to accept that a secretary of state who handles all her communications on a home-brewed server never passed classified information,” Fiorina said.
  • (14) Hague's campaign included parading Kaminski before the Jewish Chronicle and the more credulous blogger Iain Dale at the party conference: Dale's interview is reprinted across five pages in Total Politics , of which Lord Ashcroft owns 25%.
  • (15) The pirate's credulity regarding the US authorities' bogus ransom negotiations may make for a happy ending, but it's also the moment when America's superpower seems almost tragically all-consuming.
  • (16) Kiev's police chief later claimed that he ordered the assault, but that strains credulity.
  • (17) That suggestion, which always appeared unsatisfactory, now stretches the bounds of credulity.
  • (18) Equally credulous were those who, on the Monday evening, circulated reports that rioters had broken into London Zoo – thanks largely to a single, poorly-lit picture of what appears to be a tiger on a stairwell , with the irresistible subject line: "Oh my god – reports of tigers roaming around Primrose Hill."
  • (19) But the manipulation does not just tell us how sly operators view the credulous masses, but how they see themselves.
  • (20) Ghosts are not phantoms floating on the periphery of village life, the concern only of children and the credulous.