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A recent commenter on our Web site asked, "Is gullibility a word"? Yes, it's entered as a run-on at our entry for "gullible," along with "gullibly." All three of these words descend from the verb gull, meaning "to deceive or take advantage of." The verb "gull" was borrowed into English from Anglo-French in the mid-16th century. Another relative is the noun "gull," referring to a person who is easy to cheat - no relation to the familiar word for a sea bird, which is of Celtic origin.

Examples of gullible in a Sentence

I'm not gullible enough to believe something that outrageous. They sell overpriced souvenirs to gullible tourists.

Recent Examples on the Web The allegations, often made by obscure Hindu nationalist activists on social media or by local religious figures, might accuse Muslim clerics of training good-looking young men to seduce gullible Hindu women. — Sadanand Dhume, WSJ, "Hindu Nationalists’ Crazy Crackdown on ‘Love Jihad’," 25 Nov. 2020 Above all, the FBI, DNI, Senate, and just about everyone else involved share one common message to Americans: please, please don't be gullible in this high-tension, disinformation-rich environment. — Kate Cox, Ars Technica, "Iran behind supposed “Proud Boys” voter-intimidation emails, Feds allege," 22 Oct. 2020 In many cases, the ICOs were pushed by hucksters who exploited a lack of regulation to sell digital tokens to a greedy, gullible public. — Jeff John Roberts, Fortune, "The blockchain industry faces a moment of truth as high-profile projects go live," 21 Oct. 2020 Hartman’s newspaper peers also frequently took advantage of his gullible side. — Dennis Brackin, Star Tribune, "'Sidisms' made for big laughs, even if their creator didn't get the joke," 19 Oct. 2020 The first lady once again gets off light—thanks to a gullible media and an incredibly low bar set by her husband. — J.c. Pan, The New Republic, "Melania Trump’s Charmed Pandemic Life," 6 Oct. 2020 But a few gullible ones—maybe four, maybe six, maybe eight—were more accommodating. — Nicholas Thompson, Wired, "How Twitter Survived Its Biggest Hack—and Plans to Stop the Next One," 24 Sep. 2020 The reasons expressed for their reticence included, chiefly, a belief that athletes wield dangerous influence over gullible fans. — Michael Serazio, The Conversation, "The numbers behind America’s 180 on athlete activism," 15 Sep. 2020 These things get passed around via emails from one gullible and naive nitwit to the next. — Tom Margenau, Dallas News, "Setting the record straight: Internet lies about Social Security never go away," 13 Sep. 2020

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'gullible.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.