Definify.com
Webster 1913 Edition
Disbelief
Dis-be-lief′
,Noun.
The act of disbelieving;; a state of the mind in which one is fully persuaded that an opinion, assertion, or doctrine is not true; refusal of assent, credit, or credence; denial of belief.
Our belief or
disbelief
of a thing does not alter the nature of the thing. Tillotson.
Syn. – Distrust; unbelief; incredulity; doubt; skepticism. –
Disbelief
, Unbelief
. Unbelief is a mere failure to admit; disbelief is a positive rejection. One may be an unbeliever in Christianity from ignorance or want of inquiry; a unbeliever has the proofs before him, and incurs the guilt of setting them aside. Unbelief is usually open to conviction; disbelief is already convinced as to the falsity of that which it rejects. Men often tell a story in such a manner that we regard everything they say with unbelief. Familiarity with the worst parts of human nature often leads us into a disbelief in many good qualities which really exist among men. Webster 1828 Edition
Disbelief
DISBELIEF
,Noun.
Our belief or disbelief of a thing does not alter the nature of the thing.
Definition 2024
disbelief
disbelief
English
Noun
disbelief (countable and uncountable, plural disbeliefs)
- Unpreparedness, unwillingness, or inability to believe that something is the case.
- She cried out in disbelief on hearing that terrorists had crashed an airplane into the World Trade Center in New York City.
- Astonishment.
- I stared in disbelief at the Grand Canyon.
- The loss or abandonment of a belief; cessation of belief.
- 1885, H. J. Hardwicke, “The God Idea”, in The Agnostic: A Monthly Journal of Liberal Thought, volume 1, page 239:
- There is an agony of suffering in that lingering doubt which haunts the human soul in the beginnings of disbelief.
- 1927, Gilbert W. Gabriel, “Male, Female and American Drama”, in Vanity Fair, volume 27, number 4, page 73:
- No adolescent can achieve disbelief in the stork without an eruption of young oaths and cynicisms.
- Laikwan Pang (2002) Building a New China in Cinema: The Chinese Left-wing Cinema Movement, 1932-1937, ISBN 074250946X, page 99: “His later left-wing films prevented any pure and strong emotional attachment between the two sexes from gaining narrative momentum, which might reflect his gradual disbelief in romantic love.”
- Gloria Neufeld Redekop (2012) Bad Girls and Boys Go to **** (or not): Engaging Fundamentalist Evangelicalism, ISBN 1620320614, page 246: “Just like the disbelief in Santa Claus happens gradually, I wondered if it was similar for people leaving their faith.”
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Synonyms
Related terms
Translations
unpreparedness, unwillingness, or inability to believe that something is the case
|
astonishment
References
- “disbelief” in An American Dictionary of the English Language, by Noah Webster, 1828.
- disbelief in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
- “disbelief” in Dictionary.com Unabridged, v1.0.1, Lexico Publishing Group, 2006.