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PLAUSIBLE
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Apparently reasonable and credible, and therefore convincing
Example:
a plausible excuse
Classified under:
Similar:
arguable (capable of being supported by argument)
glib; pat; slick (having only superficial plausibility)
Also:
believable; credible (capable of being believed)
Antonym:
implausible (having a quality that provokes disbelief)
Derivation:
plausibility; plausibleness (apparent validity)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Given to or characterized by presenting specious arguments
Example:
a plausible liar
Classified under:
Similar:
insincere (lacking sincerity)
Context examples:
My account states, that your sister's friend, the lady now staying with you, whom I have heard you mention, came to Bath with Miss Elliot and Sir Walter as long ago as September (in short when they first came themselves), and has been staying there ever since; that she is a clever, insinuating, handsome woman, poor and plausible, and altogether such in situation and manner, as to give a general idea, among Sir Walter's acquaintance, of her meaning to be Lady Elliot, and as general a surprise that Miss Elliot should be apparently, blind to the danger.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
Your reasoning is certainly plausible.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
It sounds plausible.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
He had never received a sign of the existence of one, and from absence of judgment in rejecting all he wrote it seemed plausible that editors were myths, manufactured and maintained by office boys, typesetters, and pressmen.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
I gave him a short account of some particulars, and made my story as plausible and consistent as I could; but I thought it necessary to disguise my country, and call myself a Hollander; because my intentions were for Japan, and I knew the Dutch were the only Europeans permitted to enter into that kingdom.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt enough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful embarrassment.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
I managed to see him on a plausible pretext, but I seemed to read in his dark, deepset, brooding eyes that he was perfectly aware of my true business.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
According to WHO causality assessment criteria of suspected adverse reactions it is applicable to a clinical event, including laboratory test abnormality, occurring in a plausible time relationship to medical intervention, and which cannot be explained by concurrent disease or other interventions.
(Definitely Related to Intervention, NCI Thesaurus)
“Exactly,” said I. “A plausible lawyer could make it out as an act of self-defence. There may be a hundred crimes in the background, but it is only on this one that they can be tried.”
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
