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plausible
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  • Proofreaders do not like them, but they give a plausibility to the story.   (source)
    plausibility = apparent reasonableness (though unproven)
  • But two great cosmological discoveries of this century—Hubble's law, and observation of the cosmic microwave background-show that the big bang theory is currently the most plausible explanation for the origin of the universe.†   (source)
  • This led to a debate between the two men on the differences between what was probable, plausible, and possible—a debate that might have gone on for an hour, but for a knock at the door.†   (source)
  • Until Rachael told me to talk to a recruiter—implicitly arguing that she thought I could handle it—joining the Marines seemed as plausible as flying to Mars.†   (source)
  • That should be plausible enough.†   (source)
  • He looks like a plausible Mr. Patel, face rounder than his sons.†   (source)
  • The idea seemed perfectly plausible.†   (source)
  • The Population Police are backlogged right now, following leads from the rally, so I should have a day or two to come up with a plausible-sounding explanation.†   (source)
  • He exceeded all plausible expectations of landings, putting us just nine meters from the target.†   (source)
  • That thought hadn't occurred to me, but it sounded plausible.†   (source)
  • Sure enough, when Harry finally entered the room Ron was snoring a little too loudly to be entirely plausible.†   (source)
  • Is that part plausible—so far?†   (source)
  • She woke up in the dorms and first imagined she'd dreamt it, every moment: the underground chambers, the water, the red boxes, that hand on the small of her back and then the bed, the pillows in the cave within the cave—none of it seemed plausible.†   (source)
  • It was the plausibility of such a plan, the perfect way such a plan could deflect the neighbors' knowledge of you.†   (source)
  • She was too tired for music, she couldn't play cards alone, and—well, billiards seemed to be the only plausible activity.†   (source)
  • "Maybe she's too tired and cold," Claire said, and enough of the others agreed this was plausible that it was decided we would go back to the house, treat Millard with what supplies we had, and hope that with some time to rest, both the headmistress and her loop would return to normal.†   (source)
  • But everything was unlikely these days, and Reynie preferred almost any explanation to the one that seemed most plausible: For some awful, unknown reason, Mr. Benedict had tricked them.†   (source)
  • Her reverie, once rich in plausible details, had become a passing silliness before the hard mass of the actual.†   (source)
  • For the first time, the Colonel's theory seemed plausible.†   (source)
  • When his father asked about the blood, there would be a plausible explanation.†   (source)
  • For instance, he had spent those fifteen years pretending to be an out-of-work actor, which was plausible enough.†   (source)
  • It's as plausible as anything I'll come up with.†   (source)
  • He thought it must be a good distance—the sounds were faint—and he would probably find some plausible reason for the sound.†   (source)
  • Mack wasn't sure about a lot of things, but at some time in his heart and mind during the days following his tiff with the icy driveway, he became convinced that there were three plausible explanations for the note.†   (source)
  • They aren't even trying to give you a plausible story, Johnny.†   (source)
  • But I just pulled my magazine higher over my face, following the advice of the immortal Richard Milhous Nixon: plausible deniability.†   (source)
  • It was a lie, but a plausible lie.†   (source)
  • I read carefully through the descriptions, looking for anything that sounded familiar, let alone plausible.†   (source)
  • Dickens, who could be very suggestive, was aware that his novels were often read around the family breakfast table, and he wanted to protect children from anything luridly sexual, as well as to provide wives with plausible deniability.†   (source)
  • Much of what Dee said sounded plausible.†   (source)
  • Enough strange things began happening to the men who brought him to justice to make his claim seem almost plausible.†   (source)
  • It has been said that depression is a failure to imagine a plausible desirable future for oneself, and, not just in Marin, but in the whole region, in the Bay Area, and in many other places too, places both near and far, the apocalypse appeared to have arrived and yet it was not apocalyptic, which is to say that while the changes were jarring they were not the end, and life went on, and people found things to do and ways to be and people to be with, and plausible desirable futures began to emerge, unimaginable previously, but not unimaginable now, and the result was something not unlike relief.†   (source)
  • But in a flash she hit on a plausible answer It was as though she was getting inspiration from some guiding spirit.†   (source)
  • A phone or electric bill addressed to him, or someone whose name might plausibly be associated with his, that placed him more precisely in the world.†   (source)
  • It sounds plausible enough.†   (source)
  • Which is far more plausible than a tower that reaches to the heavens.†   (source)
  • Those ideas had been nothing but plausible lies.†   (source)
  • But Mullen argues fairly convincingly that this isn't plausible.†   (source)
  • It was the only plausible explanation he could come up with, but even now there was some thing that didn't sit quite right about the whole situation.†   (source)
  • Florentino Ariza repeated the invitation later on, when she had decided to go on living without her husband, and then it had seemed more plausible.†   (source)
  • Or (and this was more plausible) as if Christer Malm had posed him.†   (source)
  • This does seem a very plausible explanation the more I think about it; for it is true, nothing vexes me more these days than to hear this sort of nonsense being repeated.†   (source)
  • No one thing was either more or less plausible than any other thing.†   (source)
  • That would be plausible, because the Koran compares the houri to pearls and crystal, and because accounts of Heaven from the time of the Koran often included bounteous fruit, especially grapes to refresh the weary.†   (source)
  • It was also the most fertile place to gather new information and plausible rumors.†   (source)
  • I couldn't think of a plausible excuse for coming into town at such an hour, so I avoided the problem altogether by circling away from the gate and climbing over the wall out of the guard's sight.†   (source)
  • What had they discovered that could not be interpreted as plausible, though exceptional, coincidence?†   (source)
  • I was just hoping for some plausible excuse to pop out of my mouth, which, considering my luck so far, was admittedly kind of a long shot.†   (source)
  • Johnnie remonstrated, half-heartedly, as he gathered the crude little invention from the frames; but his proposition wore a plausible face, and she suffered him to take them.†   (source)
  • He considered a number of different explanations for Sloan's reaction, each more elaborate than the last, but only one seemed plausible, and even it struck him as being unlikely.†   (source)
  • Sitting in his armchair, staring up at the ceiling, Franz always found some plausible response, but in fact he was thinking of Sabina.†   (source)
  • I wasn't sure that the real answers would have been plausible enough for the novelist's purpose.†   (source)
  • The excuse was plausible; bringing flowers was good manners.†   (source)
  • Her story was plausible, but it could easily be a lie.†   (source)
  • "Plausibility is the key to effective suggestion, Mr. McDaniels," explained Miss Boon.†   (source)
  • It was carried by a courier to the second-floor Senate Chamber, where an astonished Vice President interrupted the business on the floor to read it aloud: Always disposed and ready to embrace every plausible appearance of probability of preserving or restoring tranquility, I nominate William Vans Murray, our minister resident at The Hague, to be minister plenipotentiary of the United States to the French Republic.†   (source)
  • —by sending someone who was plausible.†   (source)
  • It was too bad that the scenario was plausible, Eve thought as she reached the lobby.†   (source)
  • "I would have plausible deniability," Raison said.†   (source)
  • There were other plausible reasons: Iggy, for example.†   (source)
  • She fumbled for words, trying to come up with a plausible reason for why she'd been out in the middle of the night.†   (source)
  • Sometimes, when thinking about this, I thought that the idea that one person's mind is accessible to another's is just a conversational illusion, just a figure of speech, an assumption that makes some kind of exchange between basically alien creatures seem plausible, and that really the relationship of one person to another is ultimately unknowable.†   (source)
  • You had to offer a very plausible reason to continue the search for Cain.†   (source)
  • Plausible.†   (source)
  • He made the impossible plausible and the uncanny commonplace.†   (source)
  • That little detail would make the whole story more plausible.†   (source)
  • I so totally let him, even though a very, very big part of me needs him to give me a plausible explanation so I can get beyond his brother's knife-edged words.†   (source)
  • If this typewriter of which you speak were a plausible invention, we would not hesitate to use it.†   (source)
  • I had a new notion, a plausible theory, about Casanova.†   (source)
  • What if I confessed that all I needed was some plausible excuse in order to come?†   (source)
  • I ought to get back to His Highness as quickly as possible and offer him some plausible explanation for my rather abrupt conduct.†   (source)
  • Is that plausible?†   (source)
  • Everything—faith, science, love—needs a story for people to find it plausible.†   (source)
  • It was a very touch-and-go business, in 1955, to get a wholly plausible reading from Mrs. Glass's face, and especially from her enormous blue eyes.†   (source)
  • The obvious meaning of the clauses shows that the deduction is not even plausible.†   (source)
  • You've never brought a girl to the house a single time since you've been rooming with Tradd and I demand a plausible explanation.†   (source)
  • His story was scarcely plausible-that didn't matter.†   (source)
  • But the endless rituals of trade-in, week after week, never got as far as violence or blood, and so were too plausible for the impressionable Mucho to take for long.†   (source)
  • Only Auschwitz, of all their plausible destinations, lay south, and she recalled the despair she felt when with her own eyes she verified where they were going.†   (source)
  • As long as the world was solidly theistic, the absolutes were plausible; when it got fashionable to speak of the death of God, people began to talk as though Beauty, Goodness, and Truth were psychological effects—probably base ones.†   (source)
  • And yet you just provided me with a plausible explanation.†   (source)
  • This was what gave plausibility to the whispers, that Mr. Hooper's conscience tortured him...   (source)
    plausibility = apparent reasonableness (though unknown)
  • She could of course be insane, with the astonishingly devious plausibility of the experienced maniac.†   (source)
  • And I should say what must have happened, according to plausibility, rather than what I myself could actually recall.†   (source)
  • So, today, when boards of directors look for people with the necessary experience to be candidates for top positions, they can argue somewhat plausibly that there aren't a lot of women and minorities in the executive pipeline.†   (source)
  • The other force that drove the price of quarterback insurance was the supply of human beings who could plausibly provide it.†   (source)
  • "Holmes is greatly given to lying with a sort of florid ornamentation," Geyer wrote, "and all of his stories are decorated with flamboyant draperies, intended by him to strengthen the plausibility of his statements.†   (source)
  • Indeed, it seems to me that my odd conduct can be very plausibly explained in terms of my wish to avoid any possibility of hearing any further such nonsense concerning his lordship; that is to say, I have chosen to tell white lies in both instances as the simplest means of avoiding unpleasantness.†   (source)
  • He's in as deep as any of us, and that intellect of his had better go down into the filth and come up with every plausibility and every possibility.†   (source)
  • He had been through the sweltering burrows, finding everywhere quick breathing and feverish pulses; and he was just wondering whether he could not plausibly go and press Chervil to ask the Council's permission for the Mark to spend part of the day in the bushes above ground—for that might very well bring some sort of opportunity with it—when he began to feel the need to pass hraka.†   (source)
  • It was quite beyond the bounds of plausibility that that suave and seductive visitor who had so captivated her in Cracow should appear in the flesh only hours after such a dream (duplicating the very face and voice of the dream figure)—when she had not thought of the man or even heard his name spoken in all that time.†   (source)
  • Plausibility is all I presume!†   (source)
  • "That's an interesting theory, and quite plausible," Edward said.†   (source)
  • The lack of women or minorities among the top executive ranks at least has a plausible explanation.†   (source)
  • These were the only plausible explanations I could come up with.†   (source)
  • I said, my mind racing for a plausible lie.†   (source)
  • As plausible an interpretation as this seemed, Langdon felt haunted now by a troubling paradox.†   (source)
  • I realise, of course, that there must be some plausible explanation.†   (source)
  • Can you give me one plausible scenario of how someone could kill a cardinal inside the Pantheon?†   (source)
  • "More than plausible," the Librarian reminds him.†   (source)
  • Many seconds had passed, and it was no longer plausible to be staring fixedly at the sheet of paper.†   (source)
  • I'll ask you to imagine another scenario—you tell me if it sounds plausible.†   (source)
  • You have not denied that my scenario is plausible.†   (source)
  • Does my scenario sound plausible to a man of your expertise?†   (source)
  • Looking in the windows he saw something plausible.†   (source)
  • It's my left wrist, so this is plausible.†   (source)
  • With plausible seriousness, the queen asked, "What could you steal for me, Thief?"†   (source)
  • Kayak was a grand athlete, but the idea that he was robbed of the race isn't very plausible.†   (source)
  • It's the only force that has a plausible chance of dealing with Fortier.†   (source)
  • This may be plausible, but it is only plausible.†   (source)
  • Murray's remark fixed him forever to a plausible identity.†   (source)
  • Looking at the map, measuring distances by eye, Nahuseresh had said, "It's plausible.†   (source)
  • Why did it always sound so simple, so plausible, when spoken aloud.†   (source)
  • That isn't plausible," Alessandro stated.†   (source)
  • It was kept as quiet as possible and we prepared a plausible story.†   (source)
  • GUIL: You did, the trouble is, each of them is ...plausible, without being instinctive.†   (source)
  • It would look more plausible.†   (source)
  • It was a difficult version to believe, but there was no other more plausible, and no one could think of any motive for Rebeca to murder the man who had made her happy.†   (source)
  • And yet a far more plausible explanation is that some other organization has taken control of the Illuminati brand and is using it for their own purposes.†   (source)
  • The more he learned tonight about the Legend of the Masonic Pyramid, the less plausible it all seemed.†   (source)
  • But if Crake wanted her to stay longer on any given night, do it again maybe, she'd make some excuse — jet lag, a headache, something plausible.†   (source)
  • "The only thing we can do now," said Benjy, crouching and stroking his whiskers in thought, "is to try and fake a question, invent one that will sound plausible."†   (source)
  • In college, a psych major for a while, she burbled with plausible theories about why he drank, what his personality structure was, how we ought to administer "the Luscher Color Test," or what we could do to break down "the barriers in his whole oral structure" (he couldn't cry, and therefore express pain, because in fact he couldn't bite because no doubt he had been breast-fed and forbidden, probably harshly, to bite the nipple), or he had been potty trained too early, which made him retentive of everything.†   (source)
  • Plausible deniability.†   (source)
  • But that's plausible, at least.†   (source)
  • Right, well, I was busy coming up with the theory, which isn't terribly likely, admittedly, but it's plausible.†   (source)
  • The civil rights movement achieved many things, and one of them was to create a plausible analogy between Ole Miss football and the Confederate army.†   (source)
  • Another lie, but again, plausible.†   (source)
  • It was processed behind the locked door, so, when pressed for an explanation, all Maier's subjects could do was make up what seemed to them the most plausible one.†   (source)
  • One plausible scenario.†   (source)
  • Throughout the evening he's maintained a plausible self-control, but now his brain feels like a roasting chestnut, or an animal on fire.†   (source)
  • Vanger no doubt had enough clout to keep the Hedestad police following up both plausible and implausible leads.†   (source)
  • The Temple Church was the perfect location to steal the keystone from Robert and Sophie, and its apparent relevance to the poem made it a plausible decoy.†   (source)
  • Strange things began to happen that made Holmes's claims about being the devil seem almost plausible.†   (source)
  • As Wilson puts it, what happens is that we come up with a plausible-sounding reason for why we might like or dislike something, and then we adjust our true preference to be in line with that plausible-sounding reason.†   (source)
  • If you're able to give Dahlman a tip about a plausible but fundamentally idiotic story, so much the better.†   (source)
  • Is all of that, sir, plausible?†   (source)
  • Am I, sir, still plausible?†   (source)
  • The government portrayed itself as a bulwark against the return of alien, Tutsi hegemony, the ever-present threat, which events in Burundi made entirely plausible.†   (source)
  • 18 august 1907-seattle As the future Mrs. John Rimbauer (it's the only plausible explanation for this) I was invited to join to-day an elite group of twenty-three women, led by Anna Herr Clise, to address a health care crisis in our great city, namely the lack of a facility to treat crippled and hungry children.†   (source)
  • And was it plausible that he just happened to be carrying two little pictures of himself on the off chance that he'd be able to put them in the locket while she was in the other room sleeping?†   (source)
  • According to the most plausible version of what transpired, a clerk rushed into the chambers of Sir Andrew Waugh, India's surveyor general, and exclaimed that a Bengali computer named Radhanath Sikhdar, working out of the Survey's Calcutta bureau, had "discovered the highest mountain in the world."†   (source)
  • Aside from the local historian—who seemed to have fathomed a plausible explanation, in Lexie's opinion—at least two other outside groups or individuals had investigated the claim in the past without success.†   (source)
  • Each suggestion seems plausible.†   (source)
  • But Jackie Gleason on the screen made the place more plausible—he drew her toward a perceptible center.†   (source)
  • Exit 212—SEE THE GRAVE OF ARCHDUKE FRANZ FERDINAND—THE CORPSE THAT STARTED WORLD WAR I. "That just doesn't seem plausible," Colin noted quietly.†   (source)
  • That's plausible, isn't it?†   (source)
  • He had immediately assumed that Svensson's investigative reporting about sex trafficking was the only plausible motive for the murders.†   (source)
  • As he had done so many times over the past thirty years, he was forced to think quickly on his feet-usually running feet-building plausible explanations that would support a number of obvious possibilities as well as others not so obvious.†   (source)
  • But as I said, it's not plausible.†   (source)
  • But Mulligan had gone-and in the seven years since, in the mass of rumors, guesses, theories, Sunday supplement stories, and eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen him in every part of the world, no clue to a plausible explanation had ever been discovered.†   (source)
  • It seemed too great a coincidence to have occurred purely by chance, but I could not think of any plausible explanation.†   (source)
  • You will not like this any more than I do, and I'd lie to you if I could invent a plausible alternate, but I cannot and I undoubtedly should not.†   (source)
  • Howard challenged the anonymous writer to produce proof of his charges and angrily defied anyone in the room to give him a plausible argument for how the allegations could have been possible.†   (source)
  • So you don't think it's plausible that he would have subjected Lisbeth Salander to aggravated sexual assault?†   (source)
  • Down on the ground the prairies unscroll, vast and mundane and plausible as hallucinations, dusted already with snow and scrawled with sinuous rivers.†   (source)
  • So you did the chatter immediately afterward and then you had your guys do some more chatter and you gave me the plausible but wrong scent on the pipeline and nuke plant.†   (source)
  • Not only was he able to muster a plausible denial, but he'd also made her think twice about Thigh-bolt.†   (source)
  • He always included enough realism, enough of the everyday, in his stories to make the horror commonplace and all too plausible.†   (source)
  • But what will really happen is that you will be killed by the soldiers and the world will be rid of a smooth, plausible rascal.'†   (source)
  • So what the woman said is plausible?†   (source)
  • He was a plausible one.†   (source)
  • To Thibault, it seemed entirely plausible that Clayton was manipulating people and events and—at least in one way—still controlling her life.†   (source)
  • What does plausible mean anyway?†   (source)
  • Why does it have to be plausible?†   (source)
  • A minor lesson, of course, for sanitized explanations would come from the experts, made plausible by complicated words and distorted half-truths.†   (source)
  • Because it's just not plausible that you wouldn't have clicked with someone, and yet you told me yourself that you haven't had a lot of luck in the dating world.†   (source)
  • It isn't a plausible invention?†   (source)
  • As we saw for ourselves the explanation is entirely plausible and embarrassment will restrict any formal investigation.†   (source)
  • Given my record and the time I spent over here, as well as Sheng's well-known penchant for secrecy, it's actually quite plausible.†   (source)
  • To defuse the connection, the most plausible way was to emphasize the short duration of that absence and to face the issue with a straightforward dismissal such as 'Incidentally, if you're wondering whether this has anything to do with...well, don't.†   (source)
  • Quite plausible.†   (source)
  • Was it not plausible that some psychic valve in me, analogous to whatever controls the libido of a twenty-year convict or a lovelorn ape, had blown its gaskets, leaving me guiltlessly different, victim of the pressures of biological selection but nonetheless a pervert?†   (source)
  • If questioned, he could plausibly say that he was trying to buy razor blades.†   (source)
  • Usually an effort is made to give it some semblance of physical plausibility.†   (source)
  • Their talks ranged far and fearlessly; entire philosophies were unfolded; the long avenues of history surrendered themselves for inspection and were given new plausibility.†   (source)
  • I mean, because she did not worry about what to say, about plausibility or the possibility of incredulity on his part: that somewhere, somehow, in the shape or presence or whatever of that old outcast minister was a sanctuary which would be inviolable not only to officers and mobs, but to the very irrevocable past; to whatever crimes had molded and shaped him and left him at last high and dry in a barred cell with the shape of an incipient executioner everywhere he looked.†   (source)
  • Well, should we set aside the more disputable point whether for various reasons it was possible to anchor the fleet, then plausibly enough the Benthamites of war may urge the above.†   (source)
  • Tom got out of the presence as quick as he plausibly could, and after that he complained of toothache for a week, and tied up his jaws every night.†   (source)
  • He told his story plausibly and had no trouble, since he volunteered to pay for them in advance, in engaging his rooms; a sleeping room, sitting room, and bath.†   (source)
  • Your father, too, was a man of learning as befitted his position; no man more plausibly conducted school; nor had he the manner or the speech of a common dominie; but (as ye will yourself remember) I took aye a pleasure to have him to the manse to meet the gentry; and those of my own house, Campbell of Kilrennet, Campbell of Dunswire, Campbell of Minch, and others, all well-kenned gentlemen, had pleasure in his society.†   (source)
  • But the sailors' dog-watch gossip concerning him derived a vague plausibility from the fact that now for some period the British Navy could so little afford to be squeamish in the matter of keeping up the muster—rolls, that not only were press-gangs notoriously abroad both afloat and ashore, but there was little or no secret about another matter, namely that the London police were at liberty to capture any able-bodied suspect, any questionable fellow at large and summarily ship him to dockyard or fleet.†   (source)
  • And their testimony, particularly that of the doctors, three guides, the woman who heard Roberta's last cry, all repeatedly objected to by Jephson and Belknap, for upon such weakness and demonstrable error as they could point out depended the plausibility of Clyde's daring defense.†   (source)
  • So I don't think any of us said very much about time travelling in the interval between that Thursday and the next, though its odd potentialities ran, no doubt, in most of our minds: its plausibility, that is, its practical incredibleness, the curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion it suggested.†   (source)
  • Some people who had lost by him called him a vicious man; but he regarded horse-dealing as the finest of the arts, and might have argued plausibly that it had nothing to do with morality.†   (source)
  • He answered me very plausibly on some points, he obviously had collected some evidence and prepared himself cleverly.†   (source)
  • But limitation of the capacity is never recognized as a loss by the loser therefrom: in this attribute moral or aesthetic poverty contrasts plausibly with material, since those who suffer do not mind it, whilst those who mind it soon cease to suffer.†   (source)
  • "Yes," said Mr. Glegg, interpreting Mrs. Pullet's observation with erroneous plausibility, "you must consider that, neighbor Tulliver; Wakem's son isn't likely to follow any business.†   (source)
  • For it may be argued with great plausibility that reminiscence is less an endowment than a disease, and that expectation in its only comfortable form—that of absolute faith—is practically an impossibility; whilst in the form of hope and the secondary compounds, patience, impatience, resolve, curiosity, it is a constant fluctuation between pleasure and pain.†   (source)
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