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say it: DOWT-fuhl
doubtful is an adjective meaning "open to doubt or suspicion". It is pronounced /ˈdaʊtfəl/ — DOWT-fuhl. It carries 3 recorded senses.
open to doubt or suspicion
“the candidate's doubtful past”
“he has a dubious record indeed”
“what one found uncertain the other found dubious or downright false”
“it was more than dubitable whether the friend was as influential as she thought”
fraught with uncertainty or doubt
“they were doubtful that the cord would hold”
“it was doubtful whether she would be admitted”
“dubious about agreeing to go”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for doubtful come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.