What's the difference between dubious and sceptical?

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.

Sceptical


Definition:

  • () Alt. of Scepticism

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Occasional vomits occur postoperatively in over half of patients but we are sceptical of the value of graded postoperative feeding regimens.
  • (2) It ended with a withering putdown: “I’m leaving Downing Street 10 times more sceptical than I was before ,” Juncker told his host.
  • (3) David Rothkopf, writing in Foreign Policy, is similarly sceptical. "
  • (4) A government-commissioned review into the RET, headed by the businessman and climate change sceptic Dick Warburton, concluded that while it has largely achieved its aims and helped create jobs in clean energy, it should be either wound back or cut off entirely.
  • (5) But she has repeatedly said she doesn't want the job and her hardline attitude to human rights abuses in her current job as secretary of state is said to have made the Chinese sceptical about her candidacy.
  • (6) My scepticism has not vanished overnight and I cannot help but still be haunted by certain fears.
  • (7) We had a brief conversation and I said to him he was acting from high honour here, and I said how sorry I was this wasn’t happening in three or four years time..because Barry is a man of honour..and I think he is a very capable premier and I think he has been missed.” Asked whether he had ever met Nick di Girolamo , the prime minister said both he and Mr di Girolamo attended a lot of functions, and “I don’t for a moment say I have never met him but I don’t recall it.” But former federal Liberal MP Ross Cameron sounded much more sceptical about O’Farrell’s memory lapse when speaking to Sky News.
  • (8) And despite the initial scepticism, now completely gone says Henry, DCA's transparency and accountability systems and mechanisms are now "some of the most convincing tools to fundraising, credibility and brand recognition" and is used by face-to-face fundraisers, volunteers and PR to promote the organisation.
  • (9) Kerry warned a sceptical and sometimes raucous panel that failing to strike Syria would embolden al-Qaida and raise to 100% the chances that Assad would use chemical weapons again.
  • (10) Anette Oien, too, was "deeply sceptical" to start with.
  • (11) Few of us will have reliable memories from before three or four years of age, and recollections from before that time need to be treated with scepticism.
  • (12) His initial exposure to leftist ideas was via the underground hippy press which provided him "with a certain amount of scepticism".
  • (13) He thinks Obama himself is sceptical of the current surge; in fact he thinks many of the politicians who back it are only really doing so because they want a fast exit from Afghanistan.
  • (14) Sceptics said the US protections for journalists would make such a prosecution difficult and also cited pragmatic issues, such as the difficulty of extraditing Assange, an Australian.
  • (15) Sceptics have queried whether such vast sums are realistic for an unstable nation that is battling terror groups and has struggled to attract significant foreign investment.
  • (16) But Clive Cowdery, who founded the company as Resolution Group in 2009, is understood to have been sceptical about such a go-it-alone strategy and preferred a sale on the right terms.
  • (17) Record numbers of shoppers hit the stores this weekend for the Thanksgiving Day sales but retail experts are sceptical that the trend can continue into a bumper Monday for online retailers.
  • (18) The middle term attracts the most scepticism, based on the presumption that just because your field isn't professionally accredited, you do not know anything and you can't process information.
  • (19) Smith, a climate change sceptic who has also subpoenaed government scientists’ communications, has accused the attorney generals of a political witch-hunt and for causing a “chilling impact on scientific research and development”.
  • (20) Glitzy online lectures, or fancy learning technologies, are difficult to reconcile with this fundamental scepticism.