Suspicious and suspect and dubious and doubtful

[Tech]

When I was at primary school (late 70s) we had it drilled into us that while a person may be suspicious, a package could only be suspect, lacking the mental capacity to experience suspicion and be suspicious? Well, I was wondering what's the situation with dubious, doubtful etc. Is there / was there ever a distinction like that concerning dubious / doubtful and related words? Is the suspicious / suspect distinction dead these days anyway? One sees posters about suspicious packages. I always imagine my old English teach Miss Creek turning in her grave when I see one.... Separately, do I need to get out more?

"While a person may be suspicious, a package could only be suspect, lacking the mental capacity to experience suspicion and be suspicious?"

And yet, when we hear a person described as "suspicious", we're not referring to the fact that they find something suspicious, are we? We're projecting our (or someone else's) suspicion onto them. And, by the way, "suspect personage" is not unusual usage for the dear Old Bill.

I genuinely don't know - and I should look it up, but I mistrust digital dictionaries - the etymology, but surely "dubious" suggests an innate concern about morality / provenance / whatever, whereas "doubtful" is used in a more neutral way. I'm pretty sure they're both morally neutral originally, though... I'm going to guess a Latin root to do with hesitation.

Wow, so it seems Miss Creek was just wrong about the distinction. My childhood belief system is collapsing. She always seemed infallible.

Ooh I was thinking about this the other day..."Curious" is another one isn't it?

I think your Miss Creek was making a fine distinction that most people don't think about. It's almost as though there needs to be a kind of distinction for adjectives/adverbs in much the same way as transitive/instransitive for verbs.

It's as though we need to distinguish between a quality that an object/person has (passive, intransitive) as compared with the way an object/person behaves or is perceived (active, transitive). That's a deeply philosophical question.

I have looked at my Chambers dictionary for some enlightenment, but that was inbetween doing other research for another thread, during which I lost my internet connection, again. I can multitask, but while rebooting my router for the umpteenth time, I missed out on the last 15 minutes of "Bondi Rescue".

You can see where this is going, can't you?

I'm prepared to do some more research (because your query is interesting, and I like your Miss Creek), but I'm probably going to have to bite the bullet and buy a new router. In which case, I'll be posting on the Techy Stuff area and whimpering.

So, no, you don't need to get out more. You need to stay right where you are, solve all of MN's techy problems, and while you're doing that you can hang out here with us pedants.

You are suspect, you have suspicion. You are dubious, you have doubts...

Now I'm confused :). It is suspect, your are suspicious and you have suspicion. It is doubtful, you're dubious, oh I don't know! :)

Think I have it, if you are suspicious, you have suspicion. If you are suspect, other have suspicion about you. If you are dubious, others doubt you, if you are doubtful, you doubt others. So, I think Op is correct. If you are inanimate you cannot be suspicious or doubtful.

you would be doubtful and the inanimate object would be dubious - you are doubtful because it relates to the way you are feeling.
(like with the Copy being hopeful in Never Been Kissed - "i'm pretty sure the copy doesn't have feelings")