Meaning
A person who doubts what others accept - beliefs, claims, announcements, cure-alls. The word spans the mild (show me) to the organized (the skeptic societies testing psychics), and unlike the cynic, the skeptic doubts ideas rather than motives. Compatible with belief in evidence - the ancient aim was peace, not denial; distinguishing skeptic from cynic and denier saves arguments. Regional use: General English (US spelling; UK sceptic); classical origin.
Origin
The Greek verb of looking and searching gave the school its name, and its way of life was therapeutic: Pyrrho of Elis, teaching around 360-270 BC, urged epoche, suspension of judgment, because arguments balance - equally compelling cases can be made for or against any disputed view - and the reward of not deciding is ataraxia, tranquility. The Academic skeptics, Arcesilaus and Carneades, ran the school from Plato's Academy and denied knowledge outright while allowing probability; Sextus Empiricus preserved the stock arguments. English borrowed the word through French and Late Latin sceptici, the sect of Skeptics, from the same ancient root that gives scope and inspect their looking; the noun's citations now run from a Lancaster newspaper's skeptic scientist of 1877 through frost, 9/11, and policy skeptics to the happily-ever-after skeptics of 2021. In medicine, skeptic keeps the evidence-testing duty; in ordinary talk, it just keeps the eyebrow raised.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a climate skeptic
- skeptical
- skepticism
Usage Examples
- A determined skeptic, he replicated the paper's chemistry in his garage and posted the receipts.
- The board's skeptic asked the only unanswerable question, about the missing year in the accounts.
- Three decades a psychic-fair skeptic, she still tested the table-tippers politely, with a stopwatch.