Disbelief

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Disbelief \Dis*be*lief"\, n.
     The act of disbelieving;; a state of the mind in which one is
     fully persuaded that an opinion, assertion, or doctrine is
     not true; refusal of assent, credit, or credence; denial of
     belief.
     [1913 Webster]


  
           Our belief or disbelief of a thing does not alter the
           nature of the thing.                     --Tillotson.
     [1913 Webster]
  
           No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own
           littleness that disbelief in great men.  --Carlyle.
  
     Syn: Distrust; unbelief; incredulity; doubt; skepticism. --
          {Disbelief}, {Unbelief}. Unbelief is a mere failure to
          admit; disbelief is a positive rejection. One may be an
          unbeliever in Christianity from ignorance or want of
          inquiry; a unbeliever has the proofs before him, and
          incurs the guilt of setting them aside. Unbelief is
          usually open to conviction; disbelief is already
          convinced as to the falsity of that which it rejects.
          Men often tell a story in such a manner that we regard
          everything they say with unbelief. Familiarity with the
          worst parts of human nature often leads us into a
          disbelief in many good qualities which really exist
          among men.
          [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  disbelief
       n 1: doubt about the truth of something [syn: {incredulity}, {skepticism},
             {mental rejection}]
       2: a rejection of belief [syn: {unbelief}] [ant: {belief}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  32 Moby Thesaurus words for "disbelief":
     agnosticism, atheism, confutability, contestability,
     controvertibility, deism, deniability, denial, discredit,
     disputability, doubt, doubtfulness, dubiety, dubiousness,
     dubitancy, faithlessness, heresy, inability to believe,
     incredulity, infidelity, minimifidianism, misbelief, nonbelief,
     nullifidianism, questionableness, refutability, rejection,
     repudiation, secularism, spurning, unbelief, unbelievingness