English Explanatory Dictionary

credophile

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. One who gets positive pleasure from belief and pain from doubt; one who collects beliefs not for utility but for glitter and for whom, once he or she has embraced a belief, it takes something more than mere disproof to make to let go.
  2. One who is especially gullible.

Pronunciation

/ˈkɹɛd.ə.faɪl/

Word forms

credophile credophiles

Etymology

Coined by L. Sprague de Camp from Latin credo (“to believe”) + -phile (“liker, lover”). First known use is in a personal letter from de Camp to James Randi (which is thought to still exist in Randi's archives but is not readily available for study). The word "credophile" and the adjective form "credophilic" were used by L. Sprague de Camp at least as early as 1952 in "Lands Beyond" which he co-authored with Willie Ley (De Camp, L. Sprague & Willie Ley. Lands Beyond. NY: Rinehart, 1952, pp. 268, 272

This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
Back to search All on C Russian dictionary Dahl dictionary