Meaning & use
credibility
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Meanings
noununcountable
The quality that makes a person or source seem honest, knowledgeable and worth believing.
Grammar: Uncountable: lose credibility, not lose a credibility.
Patterns
- credibility with someone
- the credibility of something
The newspaper lost its credibility after publishing the false story.
A doctor's advice carries more credibility than a stranger's online post.
She built credibility with clients by always keeping her promises.
noununcountable
The quality of being believable or possible to accept as real.
Grammar: Often refers to stories or ideas: the plot strains credibility.
Patterns
- strain credibility
- beyond credibility
The twist in the final chapter stretches credibility too far.
Her explanation had little credibility given the evidence.
noununcountableinformal
Respect among a particular group because you seem authentic or knowledgeable about their world.
Grammar: Often in compounds such as street credibility.
Patterns
- credibility among people
The rapper's stories gave him street credibility with young fans.
Her years on the factory floor gave her credibility among the workers.
Common combinations
- lose credibility
- Politicians lose credibility when they break promises.
- restore credibility
- The company tried to restore its credibility after the recall.
- damage credibility
- One careless error can damage a researcher's credibility.
- gain credibility
- The theory gained credibility as more studies confirmed it.
- credibility gap
- A credibility gap opened between the mayor and voters.
Synonyms and how they differ
- trustworthiness
- Trustworthiness focuses on a person's honesty and reliability, while credibility also covers how believable a claim appears.
- reliability
- Reliability suggests consistent performance over time, often of a source, machine or witness.
- authority
- Authority means having recognized power or expert status, which can exist even where people doubt your honesty.
- plausibility
- Plausibility is about whether an idea sounds possible, not whether the person saying it is believed.
Opposites
Word family
- credible adjective
- able to be believed or trusted
- incredible adjective
- too extraordinary to believe, or wonderful
- credibly adverb
- in a believable way
- incredibility noun
- the quality of being unbelievable
Commonly confused: credibility or credulity? credibility or credit?
credibility vs credulity
Credulity means being too ready to believe things, while credibility is the quality of deserving belief.
credibility vs credit
Credit relates to praise or borrowed money, and not to being believed, although both come from a Latin word for believe.
Practice
The scientist's findings gained ___ once other labs repeated the experiment and got the same result.
Choose one answer.
Credibility is the quality of being believed, which grows when results are confirmed; credulity means gullibility and would be wrong here.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “credibility”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.