What's the difference between dubious and hesitant?

Dubious


Definition:

  • (a.) Doubtful or not settled in opinion; being in doubt; wavering or fluctuating; undetermined.
  • (a.) Occasioning doubt; not clear, or obvious; equivocal; questionable; doubtful; as, a dubious answer.
  • (a.) Of uncertain event or issue; as, in dubious battle.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It’s impossible to automate fully the process of separating truth from falsehood, and it’s dubious to cede such control to for-profit media giants.
  • (2) The draw was enough to take England to the finals in Japan, where Beckham exorcised the demons of four years earlier by scoring the only goal (a dubiously awarded penalty) in the defeat of Argentina.
  • (3) But Blair's address - "history will forgive us" - was a dubious exercise in group therapy: the cheers smacked of pathetic gratitude, as he piously pardoned the legislators, as well as himself, for the catastrophe of Iraq.
  • (4) I drive past buildings that I know, or assume, to house bedsits, their stucco peeling like eczema, their window frames rattling like old bones, and I cannot help myself from picturing the scene within: a dubious pot on an equally dubious single ring, the female in charge of it half-heartedly stirring its contents at the same time as she files her nails, reads an old Vogue, or chats to some distant parent on the telephone.
  • (5) A dubious pattern is emerging of donations through front companies.
  • (6) The relationship of this metabolic aberration to the production of headache still remains dubious for various reasons.
  • (7) During his stints in the Bush and Obama administration Comey has continually taken authoritarian and factually dubious public stances both at odds with responsible public policy and sometimes the law.
  • (8) Today the overestimation of human understanding is reflected in a dogmatic adherence to specific professional or idealogically biased doctrines and in the dubious ideal of a purely empirical science with its limited applicability to mankind.
  • (9) It seems clear that even as we buy cheap clothes with dubious provenance, from an ethical standpoint, people want to do better.
  • (10) Their mechanism is dubious: swelling of mitochondria and intracellular lipidosis, which could signify cellular hypoxia, are rarely present.
  • (11) Imprecise definitions of these complications of necrotizing pancreatitis make inter-institutional comparisons of previously identified data dubious.
  • (12) Critics say this is part of a broader, dubious attempt to appease the Kremlin and boost bilateral trade.
  • (13) In his attempt to justify the unjustifiable, Mr Grieve has clutched at a fragile constitutional doctrine and adopted a deeply dubious legal course.
  • (14) Exporting what appear to be educational success stories is a dubious enterprise, because it is so easy to misread how another country's system works and to discount its cultural background.
  • (15) Observed retrospectively, in some cases death was the result of dubious indication.
  • (16) The Guardian’s own readers’ anthology of dubious deals – crusty rolls 40p, two for £1!
  • (17) Sensitivity (dubious + positive, after exclusion of inadequates) was 0.83 and dependent on histologic type (infiltrating = 0.87, intraductal = 0.68).
  • (18) The vice-president even made repeated trips to CIA headquarters in Langley to bully analysts into producing more hawkish reports, while Rumsfeld’s Pentagon sucked up highly dubious “evidence” from Iraqi exiles and ideological freelancers.
  • (19) This becomes very dubious when they are more numerous.
  • (20) The change in surface tension did not correlate with a change in lung retractive forces or with lung lipid content and was, therefore, of dubious biological significance.

Hesitant


Definition:

  • (a.) Not prompt in deciding or acting; hesitating.
  • (a.) Unready in speech.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It appeared Dunaway and Warren Beatty had an envelope containing a card naming a previous award won by La La Land, prompting visible hesitation between the two veteran actors before Dunaway went ahead and named La La Land.
  • (2) Nocturia (OR 1.8) and hesitancy (OR 4.3) were found to be predictive of surgery for younger men (age range 49-55), while only nocturia (OR 2.4) was predictive among older men (age range 62-68).
  • (3) Maybe this will be increasing the frequency of patrols, or going to places that the Obama administration has been hesitant to go – such as actually undertaking a non-innocent passage military patrols within 12 miles of an artificial island.
  • (4) The standards committee report by a cross-party group of MPs said it "deplored" stings but would "not hesitate to act in such cases if wrongdoing had occurred".
  • (5) The Senate’s economic references committee accused Asic of missing or ignoring persistent signs of wrongdoing , characterising it as a “timid, hesitant regulator” that was too ready to uncritically accept assurances of a large institution that there were no grounds for intervention.
  • (6) April 16, 2014 The hesitancy – or unwillingness – of Ukrainian troops to use their weapons has produced multiple awkward confrontations with civilian crowds Wednesday, including one in Pchyolkino south of Kratamorsk, which seems still to be unresolved after an hours-long standoff.
  • (7) He "jumped without hesitation", said official sources quoted in the Daily Breeze.
  • (8) But the character – compounded of piercing sanity and existential despair, infinite hesitation and impulsive action, self-laceration and observant irony – is so multi-faceted, it is bound to coincide at some point with an actor’s particular gifts.
  • (9) The Clinton campaign manager also hesitated when asked if any of his staff had access to Sanders’ records, saying he was sure no one had “reached into Bernie Sanders’ data and extracted it in the way that the Bernie Sanders campaign did this week”.
  • (10) Their hesitations are focusing in on provisions to cut more than $800bn from the Medicaid budget by phasing out the expansion of the program that had brought healthcare coverage to an extra 11 million adult Americans.
  • (11) Photograph: Alamy While most politicians would have immediately sent for the drillers, Acosta hesitated.
  • (12) For instance; hesitant to go to a hot spring, or on a trip with friends (76%), hesitant to go to a clinic or a hospital for physical check-ups and common illness (74%), troublesome to wear special underwear (69%), inconvenient because ordinary clothes cannot be worn (56%), distressed when viewing own body (52%), unable to dress in thin clothes in hot summer season (50%), imbalance of the breasts (49%), inconvenient to participate in sports (47%).
  • (13) Few would hesitate to allow their data to be used in a project that could improve outcomes for everyone.
  • (14) But Fallon said that “ we would not hesitate ” to kill others whom the UK understands to represent active terrorist threats, all without disclosing the evidence justifying that designation or subjecting it to scrutiny.
  • (15) Fox himself has seemed a little hesitant on the few occasions he has answered questions about Werritty.
  • (16) The referring physician should not hesitate to ask for perioperative mortality statistics from the referral center.
  • (17) Ms Williams's name will already be familiar to many gay rights campaigners courtesy of a memorable speech on same-sex relationships, in which she applauded Jamaica's criminalisation of what her sect considers a curable aberration, a diagnosis she did not hesitate to apply to Tom Daly.
  • (18) Then Jake Connor, an 18-year-old who replaced Scott Grix for only his second senior appearance and looked admirably composed from the start, exploited some hesitant defence down Warrington's left to ground the ball in an Atkins tackle.
  • (19) A statement issued by the North Korean military warned that it would carry out "strong physical retaliations without hesitation if South Korean warmongers carry out reckless military provocations".
  • (20) Transsexuals who had not undergone surgery, although it had been offered to them providing they fulfilled the usual requirements, were classified into various subgroups, measured according to their attitude towards sex reassignment surgery: they were transsexuals with an unaltered wish for surgery, transsexuals who were ambivalent towards surgery (hesitating patients), and transsexuals who had relinquished their wish for surgery and lived in the initial gender role.