DUBIOUS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does dubious mean? 

• DUBIOUS (adjective)
  The adjective DUBIOUS has 3 senses:

1. fraught with uncertainty or doubt

2. open to doubt or suspicion

3. not convinced

  Familiarity information: DUBIOUS used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DUBIOUS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Fraught with uncertainty or doubt

Synonyms:

doubtful; dubious

Context example:

dubious about agreeing to go

Similar:

incertain; uncertain; unsure (lacking or indicating lack of confidence or assurance)

Derivation:

dubiousness (the state of being unsure of something)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Open to doubt or suspicion

Synonyms:

doubtful; dubious; dubitable; in question

Context example:

it was more than dubitable whether the friend was as influential as she thought

Similar:

questionable (subject to question)

Derivation:

dubiousness (uncertainty about the truth or factuality or existence of something)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Not convinced

Context example:

they admitted the force of my argument but remained dubious

Similar:

unconvinced (lacking conviction)

Derivation:

dubiousness (the state of being unsure of something)

 Context examples 

Poor Maria was dubious and frightened, but she remained loyal.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

His manners, however, must have been unmarked, wavering, dubious, or she could not have been so misled.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Though he followed her, he was still dubious, and he could not forbear an occasional halt in order more carefully to study the warning.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

A fortnight of dubious calm succeeded my return to Thornfield Hall.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

With a dubious glance at the inspector’s notebook, he plunged at once into his extraordinary statement.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

So that controversies, wranglings, disputes, and positiveness, in false or dubious propositions, are evils unknown among the Houyhnhnms.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Now it was a lithe, furtive stoat which shot across the path upon some fell errand of its own; then it was a wild cat which squatted upon the outlying branch of an oak and peeped at the traveller with a yellow and dubious eye.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Scraps of popular songs were chorused with an enthusiasm which was a strange prelude to a scientific lecture, and there was already a tendency to personal chaff which promised a jovial evening to others, however embarrassing it might be to the recipients of these dubious honors.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

They had brought out a first edition of fifteen hundred copies and been dubious of selling it.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)