plausibility

Borrowed from New Latin plausibilitās.

plausibility (countable and uncountable, plural plausibilities)

1. (obsolete) The quality of deserving applause, praiseworthiness; something worthy of praise.
   • 1668, David Lloyd, Memories of the Lives, Actions, Sufferings & Deaths of Those Noble, Reverend, and Excellent Personages that Suffered for the Protestant Religion:

     integrity, fidelity, and other gracious plausibilities

2. (now rare) The appearance of truth, especially when deceptive; speciousness.
   • 1790, Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men‎:

     Plausibility, I know, can only be unmasked by shewing the absurdities it glosses over, and the simple truths it involves with specious errors.

3. A plausible statement, argument etc.
   • 1869, Robert Browning, “XI. Guido.”, in The Ring and the Book. , volume IV, London: Smith, Elder and Co., →OCLC, page 164, lines 1680–1681 and 1685–1687:

     She too must shimmer through the gloom o' the grave, / Come and confront me— […] / Striking me dumb, and helping her to speak, / Tell her own story her own way, and turn / My plausibility to nothingness!

4. (now in more positive sense) The fact of being believable; believability, credibility.
   • 2014 October 14, David Malcolm, “The Great War Re-Remembered: Allohistory and Allohistorical Fiction”, in Martin Löschnigg, Marzena Sokolowska-Paryz, editors, The Great War in Post-Memory Literature and Film‎, Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG., →ISBN, page 173:

     The question of the plausibility of the counter-factual is seen as key in all three discussions of allohistorical fiction (as it is in Demandt's and Ferguson's examinations of allohistory) (cf. Rodiek 25–26; Ritter 15–16; Helbig 32).

• implausibility

• “plausibility”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “plausibility”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.