Innovative Usage Thread

[Travis B.]

To me at least, it is incredible which has changed its meaning drastically, while incredulous is much closer to its literal meaning...

[Vijay]

"Impossible to believe" seems closer in meaning to "astonishing" than to "not believing."

[Kuchigakatai]

"Unbelievable" (which looks like a calque of "incredible" with a Germanic prefix and root...) is the word that has taken over the old meaning of "incredible".

[axolotl]

To me at least, it is incredible which has changed its meaning drastically, while incredulous is much closer to its literal meaning...

My impression of "incredulous" has always been that it's more similar to "surprised/shocked" or even "amazed" (so a similar meaning to "incredible") than it is to "unbelieving."

[Moose-tache]

If I read "I was incredulous" in a book, I would assume it closer in meaning to "I was sceptical" than "I was amazed." It retains its original meaning more thoroughly than "incredible," in much the same way that "fantastical" is more conservative than "fantastic."

[Vijay]

If I read "I was incredulous" in a book, I would assume it closer in meaning to "I was sceptical" than "I was amazed."

Then your assumption would probably be wrong.

[Travis B.]

To me at least, incredulous specifically has the meaning of skeptical; I did not even know that to some it had the meaning of amazed.

[Vlürch]

Wait, is the standard meaning of incredulous really not "hard to believe"? The meanings I knew, depending on context, were that and as more or less synonymous with "sceptical", except with an additional implication of outlandishness or ridiculousness. Googling sentences like "X was incredulous" where X is something other than a living being seems to suggest that it is also used with that meaning, although admittedly much less than I always assumed...

A) It was incredulous. = It was hard to believe (because it was outlandish or ridiculous).
B) The guy was incredulous. = The guy was sceptical (because he thought the thing in question was outlandish or ridiculous).

In an actual context:
A) The quote about Trump that Linguoboy posted.
B) I was incredulous at the proposition that Basque descends from an 18th century Papuan creole.

So maybe it could be a meaning that has remained in use in (some forms of) literature, or maybe it could even be dialectal or something?

I mean, I've realised before that I've picked up some weird dialectal meanings for words from wherever that are obsolete at least in the US, like that one time I was bewildered at homely having a primarily negative connotation... until it turned out that it doesn't in (at least some) British English, although personally I may well have learned the positive meaning of homely from wholesomists. I hate wholesomism with a passion (including left-wing wholesomism because it's still wholesomism), but that word still stuck to me as a positive one because it makes more sense than it being a negative one, so thankfully it turned out the positive meaning wasn't a wholesomist innovation.

[quinterbeck]

For me, incredulous is a distictly emotional scepticism. "She was incredulous" carries the sense of She could hardly believe something so preposterous had been claimed

I hate wholesomism with a passion

What on earth is wholesomism? I don't get any decent google hits for it

[Raphael]

I hate wholesomism with a passion

What on earth is wholesomism? I don't get any decent google hits for it

An attitude of wanting everything to be wholesome?

[akam chinjir]

Surely the place to learn a positive meaning for "homely" is Tolkien, and the Last Homely House.

[Travis B.]

To me at least, people are incredulous, not things.

[Vlürch]

I hate wholesomism with a passion

What on earth is wholesomism? I don't get any decent google hits for it

An attitude of wanting everything to be wholesome?

Yeah, it's a desire for "wholesomeness" and "healthy lifestyles" and things like that, and in my experience it's always deeply rooted in racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. regardless of whether it's right-wing or left-wing. There's usually some appeal to "traditional values", "common sense" or even just "nature". Their arguments tend to go like "in your heart, you know and feel that X is wrong", usually about homosexuality, inter-ethnic relationships, sex before marriage, having different religious beliefs than them, eating foods they don't like and consider unhealthy (most commonly meat, I think) or even just liking films/TV shows/other entertainment they consider "degenerate" or "decadent" or whatever. Probably the worst wholesomists are eco-fascists, but there are also communist wholesomists, etc.

I'd estimate that there are probably almost as many left-wing wholesomists as there are right-wing ones, although usually even the left-wing ones tend to be openly anti-liberal and call themselves "real leftists" or whatever... but that's not to say there aren't "liberal" wholesomists, who tend to be the most annoying of all because they claim to stand for equality and freedom but rule certain people out as undeserving of such things based on characteristics and/or behaviours they consider bad, often mentioning or at least implying "meritocracy" and whatnot.

Because wholesomists aren't organised, it's hard to know for sure how prevalent wholesomism is, but it's obviously becoming more prevalent in recent years; of course it used to be even more prevalent in the past (I'd guess the majority of people everywhere in the world used to be wholesomists), but every year there's more wholesomism online. Sites like 4chan and Reddit are full of wholesomists, and while most of the time they won't bring up their wholesomism completely out of the blue, they do like to shit on things they don't like and in those contexts their wholesomism will often begin to slip out.

One thing to note is that probably about half of the wholesomists I've had the displeasure of interacting with were in favour of legalising cannabis since they recognise its medical properties. Probably more than half tend to be vegans or vegetarians, and the far-right openly racist ones like to bring up the fact that Hitler was a vegetarian. Wholesomists can be any religion (including atheists), and often bring up their religion as a guide to living a good life. Usually they'll also mention the importance of community, etc.

Basically, wholesomists are self-righteous assholes who have it all figured out and are content with the most banal of entertainment and want others to stop liking things they don't like.

To me at least, people are incredulous, not things.

So, something like "the plan was incredulous" wouldn't make sense to you?

[Raholeun]

Please save the condescending ideological monologues for the Ephemera subforum.

[Vlürch]

Please save the condescending ideological monologues for the Ephemera subforum.

Well, I had to explain what it is, that it's not just an innocent preference for "wholesome" things...

[anteallach]

To me at least, people are incredulous, not things.

So, something like "the plan was incredulous" wouldn't make sense to you?

It's fairly obvious what it's meant to mean, but it's not how I'm used to the word being used, no.

[akam chinjir]

To me at least, people are incredulous, not things.

So, something like "the plan was incredulous" wouldn't make sense to you?

It's fairly obvious what it's meant to mean, but it's not how I'm used to the word being used, no.

I'm not sure I'd know what that's supposed to mean, out of context; "the plan was unbelievable" and "the plan was to be incredulous" both seem possible.

[Vlürch]

So, something like "the plan was incredulous" wouldn't make sense to you?

It's fairly obvious what it's meant to mean, but it's not how I'm used to the word being used, no.

I'm not sure I'd know what that's supposed to mean, out of context; "the plan was unbelievable" and "the plan was to be incredulous" both seem possible.

Huh... I'm still wondering if it could've continuously remained in use with that meaning in some kind of literature or some dialect or whatever, because I definitely learned it as meaning that too (IIRC as the primarily meaning) and it feels just as natural and correct as the "sceptical" meaning. In all honesty, though, I have to admit that there's a possibility I learned it from something that was old and just didn't realise that meaning had fallen out of regular use, considering I read a lot of Poe's stuff and whatnot starting when I was like 13. So if Poe used it with that meaning, it probably would've stuck to me... hmm.

[Travis B.]

I could deduce what "the plan was incredulous" meant, but that does not mean that it is a normal grammatical usage in English as I know it.

[zompist]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned "incredulous" as a shibboleth of standard English. That is, like "literally" or "beg the question", it has an 'incorrect' but very popular sense that people have been warning about for a couple of centuries.

Merriam-Webster has thrown in the towel: they now accept "incredulous" in the sense "incredible".

What's perhaps more surprising is that there's no similar confusion with "credulous". Apparently people aren't tempted to use it to mean "credible".