Incredible

How to spell incredible

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce incredible

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does incredible mean?

1. adjectiveSo remarkable, surprising, or extreme that it is hard to believe.

Incredible in a sentence

• The view from the summit was absolutely incredible.

• She finished the marathon in an incredible time of under three hours.

Where does incredible come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin incredibilis, which combined the negative prefix in- meaning 'not' with credibilis, 'believable', itself built on the verb credere, meaning 'to believe' or 'to trust'. So the literal sense was simply 'not to be believed', describing a claim or event so extraordinary that belief was a stretch. English took it up in the fifteenth century, at first keeping that strict meaning of something impossible to credit, before the word softened over time into a general term of admiration for anything astonishing or wonderful. The same credere root sits inside a whole family of English words, including credit, credentials, credence, and the more closely related credible, which is exactly why the -ible ending (rather than -able) is the spelling to remember. Holding on to that buried root cred helps fix both the single d and the unstressed -ible that adults so often slip on.

How the word is built

• in- (not)
• cred (from credere: to believe)
• -ible (able to be)