(n.) Readiness to believe on slight evidence; credulity.
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.
Gullibility
Definition:
Example Sentences:
(1) These private providers take more than a fifth of fees in profit and spend even more on marketing to cover up the poor quality of what they are offering – subprime degrees not worth the paper they are printed on being sold to very young, very gullible consumers .
(2) As a consequence, he's the go-to guy for a scathing quote on dissembling theologies and their gullible believers.
(3) Bailey hits back, telling Russell that he is displaying "a degree of gullibility" that is "not consistent with your role".
(4) Generally, the victim never reports that they have been a victim of fraud to the police because they are too ashamed of their own gullibility.
(5) It's in this "gap" that W1A 's comedy is located, but it's also where many real-life professionals ply their trade, bamboozling the gullible and the desperate with their bewitching neologisms, barmy suggestions and bizarre leadership tests.
(6) Remember you're human after all While much of the above are technical solutions to prevent you being hacked and scammed, hacking done well is really the skill of tricking human beings, not computers, by preying on their gullibility, taking advantage of our trust, greed or altruistic impulses.
(7) And what was this intended to prove (other than, perhaps, some nebulous point about the media’s gullibility )?
(8) I'm not advocating dumb gullibility, but it is has always amused me that those who instinctively dislike Apple for being apparently cool, trendy, design-fixated and so on, are the ones who are actually so damned cool and so damned sensitive to stylistic nuance that they can't bear to celebrate or recognise obvious class, beauty and desire.
(9) • Russell was also accused of "a degree of gullibility" , after saying he still believed the investment banks advising the government had given good advice.
(10) Internally, however, they are frightened, timid, self-doubting, gullible, inconsiderate, vulnerable to erotomania, and cognitively unable to grasp the totality of actual events.
(11) You can’t blame Puerto Rican politicians for thinking that they can keep their constituents in the dark: Puerto Rico’s political history is all about assuming that we Puerto Ricans are gullible and foolish.
(12) There appears to be an unlimited supply of gullible celebrities willing to deal with the Sunday newspaper's undercover reporter: earlier this month he caught the snooker player John Higgins allegedly offering to throw matches for money.
(13) I hope Cameron is not going to be as gullible to swallow bland assurances by [president) Dmitry Medvedev and [prime minister] Vladimir Putin or be so eager to please that he fails to raise the important human rights abuses in relation to Magnitsky and [Mikhail] Khodorkovsky."
(14) "I was joking," he says, rolling his eyes at my gullibility.
(15) Granted, the new Newsweek is hoping to pass itself off as the old and real Newsweek, but, really, that is less its fault than the fault of the gullible.
(16) As for Bissinger, he is now beating his chest about his own pathetic gullibility, in a way that curiously seems to mirror the grand mea culpa that Armstrong will perform on Oprah.
(17) We have already agreed that blame game is widely spread encompassing Greenspan, gullible international governments, inadequate regulation resulting in overindulgence by the consumer and business in terms of over-borrowing," Buik said.
(18) There is evidence that Philip Hammond, the least gullible of defence secretaries, is starting to cleanse the Augean stables of defence spending.
(19) They were so wrapped up in their righteousness that they did not notice that the state was thanking them for their gullibility and seizing the chance to lock down and shut up.
(20) It turns out that the joke is enough to support not just a movie but an entire industry, because tired parents are everywhere now, and they've never been more anxious… or gullible.