Disbelief

How to spell disbelief

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce disbelief

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does disbelief mean?

1. nounThe inability or refusal to accept that something is true or real.

Disbelief in a sentence

• She stared at the bill in disbelief, certain it was a mistake.

• The jury listened to the alibi with open disbelief.

Where does disbelief come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is a relatively transparent English formation, joining the prefix dis-, which reverses or negates, to the noun belief. Belief itself goes back to Old English geleafa, meaning 'faith' or 'trust', built on the same Germanic root that gives us 'believe' and the older 'leave' in the sense of allowing or trusting. The negating prefix dis- came into English from Latin, where it meant 'apart' or 'not', and by the late medieval period English writers were freely attaching it to native words. Disbelief itself is recorded from the early 1600s, originally describing a refusal of religious faith before it broadened into the everyday sense of refusing to accept that something is true. The spelling trap lives at the seam: dis- keeps its single s, and the word is one of many that follow the i-before-e pattern, so 'belief' takes ie, not ei.

How the word is built

• dis- (not, opposite of)
• belief (acceptance that something is true, from believe)