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Incredulous/Incredible

From a letter to the editor of a South Carolina newspaper. The subject: Events at South Carolina State University.

[SCSU President Thomas] Elzey has made two incredulous declarations to all viewing from near and afar: “SCSU will not close, and I will not resign.” Though he emphatically states these, he has control of neither.

The writer means incredible. Elzey has made statements that we cannot believe. Things are incredible – experiences, statements.

Incredulous refers to the human condition or feeling of not being able to believe something. I am incredulous when I hear Elzey say incredible things.

Had Elzey said I cannot believe what is happening to me! Everyone thinks I should resign! – then he would have been declaring his incredulity.

Margaret Soltan, February 22, 2015 5:58AM
Posted in: Scathing Online Schoolmarm

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4 Responses to “Incredulous/Incredible”

  1. Greg Says:

    And, at times, Descartes could be almost, but not quite entirely, incredulous.

  2. Jack/OH Says:

    Incredible/incredulous–yep. Compound words, hyphenated words, and separable words bug me. “Girlfriend”, “girl-friend”, and “girl friend” are not the same to me. I’m not sure I’m handling what seems to be a trend toward compounding of words that are usually separable, or, at most, hyphenated.

  3. Greg Says:

    Jack —

    I’ve never thought of words with prefixes that change their meaning (say “incredible” but strangely not “inflammable”) as compound, though in a sense they are, but one part of them is not a full word on its own. The “in” is not the preposition “in” but its homonym, a word that negates whatever word follows.

    You might enjoy this Wikipedia entry on kennings which take compounding to another level:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenning

  4. Jack/OH Says:

    Greg, thanks. I’m not sure I’m using “compound” correctly to refer to one word made of two words completely joined without a hyphen.

    FWIW-When I see “girlfriend” or “Website” (instead of “girl friend” and “Web site”), I guess I’m put off a little by the unexpectedness of the compound, the writer’s unknown intent, implications for usage, psychology, etc.

    FWIW-As a youngster, I was scolded by a boss who wasn’t aware that “either” was something of a Janus word. My respect for the guy took a beating. I learned something. When I became a sales manager, I gave my best people pretty much freedom of action, and just warned them lightly to not get me into trouble. I never bothered trying to foolishly crack the whip over people whose skills clearly exceeded mine, and whose hearts were in the right place for the job.

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