PLAUSIBLE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Plausible

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/plˈɔzəbəl/ Listen

adjective

Plausible adj.

Worthy of being applauded; praiseworthy; commendable; ready. (Obs.)

Obtaining approbation; specifically pleasing; apparently right; specious; as, a plausible pretext; plausible manners; a plausible delusion. "Plausible and popular arguments."

Using specious arguments or discourse; as, a plausible speaker.

Synonyms: Plausible, Specious. Plausible denotes that which seems reasonable, yet leaves distrust in the judgment. Specious describes that which presents a fair appearance to the view and yet covers something false. Specious refers more definitely to the act or purpose of false representation; plausible has more reference to the effect on the beholder or hearer. An argument may by specious when it is not plausible because its sophistry is so easily discovered.

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Etymology of 'Plausible'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Plausible" Quotes from Famous Books

... plausible reasons for making a time limit or a special offer. A large publishing house, selling both magazines and books by mail occasionally turns the trick by a ...

— Business Correspondence • Anonymous

... to account for the phenomenon—some of which, I remember, seemed to me sufficiently plausible in perusal—now wore a very different and unsatisfactory aspect. The idea generally received is that this, as well as three smaller vortices among the Ferroe islands, "have no other cause than the collision of waves rising and falling, at flux and reflux, against ...

— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... indifferent. In despair at not being allowed to heal his passionate malady in his own fashion, he did the most singular thing that he could have done under the circumstances. He wrote to Saint Lambert.[281] His letter is a prodigy of plausible duplicity, though Rousseau in some of his mental states had so little sense of the difference between the actual and the imaginary, and was moreover so swiftly borne away on a flood of fine phrases, ...

— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... daily to work and did work—some. When he did not he always had a plausible excuse. As a self-excuser he ...

— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln

... frequently is, then the conjurers are in great demand: they are sent for to produce rain. If, after all their pretended mysteries, the rain does not fall so as to save their reputation, they give some plausible reason, generally ending, however, in the sacrifice of some innocent individual; and thus they go on, making excuses after excuses until the rain does fall, and they obtain all the credit of it. I need hardly say that these people are ...

— The Mission • Frederick Marryat

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