PROBABILITY • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Probability

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/prˌɑbəbˈɪləti/ Listen

noun

Probability n. (pl. probabilities)

The quality or state of being probable; appearance of reality or truth; reasonable ground of presumption; likelihood. "Probability is the appearance of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas, by the intervention of proofs whose connection is not constant, but appears for the most part to be so."

That which is or appears probable; anything that has the appearance of reality or truth. "The whole life of man is a perpetual comparison of evidence and balancing of probabilities." "We do not call for evidence till antecedent probabilities fail."

(Math.) Likelihood of the occurrence of any event in the doctrine of chances, or the ratio of the number of favorable chances to the whole number of chances, favorable and unfavorable. See 1st Chance, n., 5.

Synonyms: Likeliness; credibleness; likelihood; chance.

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Etymology of 'Probability'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Probability" Quotes from Famous Books

... The probability that one element might be changed into another was increased by the demonstration of the connexions between uranium and radium. The metal uranium has been classed with the elements since it was isolated in 1840. In 1896, Becquerel ...

— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir

... the same way with the walnut, when you undertake to plant an English walnut and get it true to the seed, you are going to have a failure. If you plant a Rush walnut you may get a nut that resembles it but there is no probability of its being a true Rush walnut. That is why we have these discussions of budding and grafting. We should be glad if seedlings would come true but they do not. I will show you tomorrow, at Enterprise, the great ...

— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various

... very hard work, and very unhealthy. There are many men who would not hesitate for a moment to go there, were the dangers of the native savagery the chief drawback; but they hesitate before a trip which means, in all probability, month after month of tramping through wet gloomy forests with a swamp here and there for a change, {465} and which will, the chances are 100 to 1, end in their dying ignominiously of fever in some ...

— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... bundle was gone. I had left it on the stall where I had been sitting. People were perpetually passing to and fro. It was scarcely possible not to have been noticed. No one that observed it would fail to make it his prey. Yet it was of too much value to me to allow me to be governed by a bare probability. I resolved to lose ...

— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... An oil painting in The Hall of the Portraits of Old Masters, Uffizi Gallery, Florence. The authorship of the painting is not certainly known. Symonds says that "it may perhaps be ascribed with some show of probability to Bugiardini." Bugiardini was a friend of Michelangelo's youth and a fellow student in the gardens of the Medici. That later in life he painted a portrait of his distinguished friend we know from Vasari. Vasari tells us that the ...

— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

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