INCREDIBLE, INCREDULOUS

INTRODUCTORY MATERIAL

Read and translate the following sentences paying special attention to the words in bold type.

1. He used few drugs — indeed, he had the incredible habit of advising his patients against medicine. 2. It seemed incredible to Kitty that she and Walter had taken part in that strange and unreal dance. 3. At this point he seemed to think he heard somebody coming, for he suddenly leaped with incredible agility into a laurel bush. 4. We had from a very early age been allowed the most incredible liberty.5. It seems incredible that «crash» was not yet used in the Britain of 1936 to denote a collision between vehicles. 6. It seemed incredible that all this malice and injury had been wrought upon the room by those who had called it for a time their home. 7.Mrs. Parker gave her the incredulous pitying, sneering icy stare that she kept for those who failed to qualify as doctors or dentists. 8. «Perhaps he wouldn’t care.» «Walter?» Her tone was incredulous. 9. Percival read it (the telephone message) and uttered an exclamation of surprise and annoyance. He seemed both incredulous and angry. «I can’t understand it, I really can’t. I can hardly believe it.» 10. The chauffeur turned an incredulous eye over his shoulder. It was the last remark he would have expected. 11. Philippa realized how incredibly alone she had been. 12. Her voice came again, this time incredibly sad, and lonely. 13. The newspapers appear to be full of nothing else. How incredibly blood-thirsty our public press is! 14.... «Oh, goodness, my feet. It’s going to rain, too.» The walk seemed endless and the King’s Road incredibly far away. She could hardly hear the traffic now. 15. Inspector Neele stared at Miss Marple and slowly shook his head. «Are you saying,» he said incredulously,«that Gladys Martin deliberately murdered Rex Fortescue? I’m sorry, Miss Marple, but I simply don’t believe it.» 16. «So I thought the only thing was that you might have hinted at something.» «Me?» he gasped incredulously. «In heaven’s name, what for?» 17. Doris turned her face away. «I’ve got my notice.» «Because of me? Because of the dog?» he asked incredulously. 18. Revenge — after all these years — scarcely seems credible. But Inspector Neele seems to take it seriously, don’t you, Inspector? 19. It was a world of good little people, comfortable, industrious, credulous. 20. I don’t know what story he told her to account for the rye, but as I told you from the beginning, Inspector Neele, Gladys Martin was a very credulous girl. In fact, there’s hardly anything she wouldn’t believe if a personable young man put it to her the right way.

EXPLANATORY NOTES

Incredible adj. Not credible; unbelievable; seeming too unusual or improbable to be possible; (coll.) difficult to believe, surprising, e.g. an ~ thing, ~ courage.

Derivatives: incredibly adv., incredibility n.

Incredulous adj. Unbelieving; unwilling or unable to believe; showing disbelief; doubting; sceptical, e.g. an ~, look.

Derivatives: incredulously adv., incredulity n.

Credible adj. Believable; worthy of belief; reliable. Credible is used of that which is believable because it is supported by evidence, sound logic, etc., e.g. a ~ account.

Derivatives: credibly adv., credibility n.

Credulous adj. Too ready to believe things; easily convinced; apt to believe with insufficient evidence.

Derivative: credulity n.

Incredible (неправдоподобный, невероятный) and incredulous (недоверчивый, скептический), incredibly (неправдоподобно, невероятно) and incredulously (недоверчиво, скептически) as well as credible (правдоподобный, вероятный), credulous (слишком доверчивый, легковерный), credibly (до­стоверно) are sometimes confused by Russian learners because of the identity of the root morpheme; the use of different suffixes, however, makes the difference between their meanings quite distinct. In this group of words, those with the negative prefix in- are much more frequently used and have a wider sphere of application than their positive counterparts.