Learn English – A word for someone who is easily driven by anyone for anything, but he’s not foolish/innocent

word-requestword-usage

Consider Mike for this.

I want a term that describes Mike, who is very easily 'convinceable'. But, Mike is not foolish or innocent. In other words, anybody able to fog a mirror can go, convince, and fulfill their wish.

Simplest example is…a salesperson with a bogus product going to Mike; it's easy for him to convince Mike. Mike purchases product without any hassle or a contractor going to Mike, convincing him for a fraudulent scheme project without much efforts.

What do we call Mike? A word for a person who can be convinced easily; but please mind it, he's not foolish or innocent. He's just easily convinceable.

My homework: I tried OneLook Reverse but could not get the term 🙁

Best Answer

Gullible is good IMO.

From http://www.learnersdictionary.com/definition/gullible: easily fooled or cheated, especially : quick to believe something that is not true. I'm not gullible enough to believe something that outrageous. They sell overpriced souvenirs to gullible tourists.

Credulous also fits, but from my experience/cultural-exposure, many people have told me they were (or someone else was) gullible, but I don't recall anyone describing someone as credulous. Strange.

Wikipedia has a comparison under gullibility:

  • Gullibility is a failure of social intelligence in which a person is easily tricked or manipulated into an ill-advised course of action. It is closely related to credulity, which is the tendency to believe unlikely propositions that are unsupported by evidence.

There is also some comparison (and interesting discussion) of the terms in wikipedia's credulity though (IMO) the definitions given are not as precise as the various references suggest.

This ngram is interesting, showing that credulous has declined in the 20th century. This COCA report shows gullible is more common now.

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