“doubteth” is a form of
doubt
/daʊt/ verb, noun
Forms doubts doubting doubted dout
- verb (ambitransitive) To consider questionable or unlikely; to hesitate to believe; to lack confidence in; to question. “He doubted that was really what you meant.”
- verb (transitive, archaic outside Scotland) To harbour suspicion about; suspect.
- verb (transitive, archaic) To anticipate with dread or fear; to apprehend.
- verb (transitive, obsolete) To fill with fear; to affright.
- verb (ambitransitive, obsolete) To dread, to fear.
- noun (uncountable, countable) Disbelief or uncertainty (about something); (countable) a particular instance of such disbelief or uncertainty. “There was some doubt as to who the child's real father was.”
- noun (countable, obsolete outside of India) A point of uncertainty, especially a yes/no or a multiple-choice question “Ma'am, I have a doubt about today's lecture”
- noun (non-native speakers' English, countable) a question (that one has)
Synonyms
distrust mistrust incertitude disbelief uncertainty dubiety doubtfulness dubiousness question
Antonyms
Etymology
The verb is derived from Middle English douten (“to doubt, fear, worry”) [and other forms], from Old French douter, doter, duter (compare Middle French doubter), from Latin dubitāre (“to be uncertain, doubt; to hesitate, waver in coming to an opinion; to consider, ponder”); the further etymology is uncertain, but one theory is that dubitō may be derived from dubius (“fluctuating, wavering; doubtful, dubious, uncertain”), from duhibius (“held as two”), from duo (“two”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁ (“two”)) + habeō (“to have, hold”) (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gʰeh₁bʰ- (“to grab, take”)). Spelling reformers of the early modern period added the letter b to reflect the Latin root dubitō, but it has never been pronounced in English.
The noun is derived from Middle English dout, doute (“uncertainty, hesitation; questionable point; anxiety, fear, reverence”) [and other forms],
from Old French doute, dote, dute (“uncertain feeling, doubt”), from doter, douter, duter (“to doubt, fear”) (compare Middle French doubter; modern French douter (“to doubt, suspect”)); see further etymology above.
The ESL "question" sense is a semantic loan from Romance cognates: Portuguese dúvida, Spanish duda, Catalan dubte, French doute, Italian dubbio and others, which can all mean "question".
Displaced Old English twēo (“doubt”) and twēoġan (“to doubt”).
Webster’s 1913
- verb To waver in opinion or judgment; to be in uncertainty as to belief respecting anything; to hesitate in belief; to be undecided as to the truth of the negative or the affirmative proposition; to b e undetermined.
- verb To suspect; to fear; to be apprehensive. [Obs.]
- verb To question or hold questionable; to withhold assent to; to hesitate to believe, or to be inclined not to believe; to withhold confidence from; to distrust; as, I have heard the story, but I doubt the truth of it. To admire superior sense, and doubt their own! Pope.
- verb To suspect; to fear; to be apprehensive of. [Obs.]
Etymology [OE. duten, douten, OF. duter, doter, douter, F. douter, fr. L. dubitare; akin to dubius doubtful. See Dubious.]
Etymology [OE. dute, doute, F. doute, fr. douter to doubt. See Doubt, v. i.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “doubt”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details