All words

plausible

Meaning

appearing to be true or real; acceptable or likely to be true.

Examples by difficulty

Basic: Simple, everyday vocabulary — the easiest to read.

The witness's story seemed to align with the evidence. It felt like a plausible explanation for the missing item, something the police could believe. He genuinely sounded like he was telling the truth.

The old man clutched the worn map, his shaky finger tracing a faded line. "It's a long shot," he whispered, his voice thick with worry, "but it's the only chance we have left. This treasure being hidden here feels surprisingly plausible, given the whispers."

The astronaut stared at the readings. They showed a strange energy signature, something completely new. It wasn't in any database, yet the patterns seemed too ordered to be a mistake. It was a truly plausible explanation for the anomaly, even if it was scary.

The detective listened, a furrow in his brow. The suspect’s story, filled with unlikely coincidences, didn't feel right. He needed something more, something truly plausible, before he could believe a single word.

Barnaby swore he saw a unicorn in his backyard, sporting a sparkly mane and munching on dandelions. While most folks raised an eyebrow, his story sounded quite plausible after he showed them a photo of a particularly shaggy, white poodle with a glittery party hat stuck on its head.

Normal: Standard, everyday language.

He told a story about finding a lost wallet, filled with cash, then returning it. It sounded a bit too perfect, but his earnest expression made it entirely plausible. I wanted to believe him, even if it felt unlikely.

He described the elaborate plan to reroute the city's entire hot dog cart syndicate through the abandoned subway tunnels. It sounded wild, but the sheer detail of his maps and cost projections made the whole thing seem genuinely plausible. We'd almost started taking notes.

The old fisherman watched the swirling fog. He'd seen strange things out here, but this thick, silent wall of white, muffling all sound, felt genuinely unnerving. His captain's claim that it was just a dense mist seemed plausible enough, but a knot of dread tightened in his stomach anyway.

My cat, Bartholomew, insists he can talk. He’ll stare me down, meowing with an intensity I’d usually reserve for a job interview. While I haven't found a talking cat particularly plausible until now, his recent demands for tuna *and* a tiny, bespoke smoking jacket make it seem… almost likely.

He explained his wild idea, and though it sounded far fetched, the way he laid out the steps made it seem genuinely plausible. I could picture it actually working.

Advanced: Richer vocabulary that stretches an upper-level reader.

He spun a story about a rogue squirrel hoarding all the neighborhood's nuts. It sounded far fetched, but given his track record for outlandish tales, it was strangely plausible. We weren't entirely convinced, but a part of us wanted to believe it.

The engineer presented a series of complex calculations for the atmospheric re-entry shield. She explained how the novel ceramic composite would withstand extreme heat, and her rationale seemed perfectly plausible given the established material science principles.

The antique automaton whirred, its articulated fingers fumbling with a tiny, tarnished key. For years, its silent, motionless presence had been a curiosity. Now, as the mechanism groaned to life, the story of its inventor, once dismissed as fantasy, began to seem entirely plausible.

His story about the missing cookie seemed quite plausible. The crumbs on his shirt and the guilty look in his eyes made it an easy assumption to accept. We all knew he had a sweet tooth.

The squirrel, sporting a tiny monocle and a waistcoat made of acorns, presented his financial projections for the winter nut harvest. His elaborate charts, filled with surprisingly sophisticated pie graphs, made his claims of a "quadruple nut surplus" seem entirely plausible, even if he did occasionally pause to bury a particularly appealing walnut.

Challenging: Rare, high-register vocabulary for serious word lovers.

The detective considered the suspect's alibi. While the timeframe was tight, the explanation for his whereabouts seemed entirely plausible. He’d seen similar circumstances before, and the narrative held together without obvious contrivance.

The astrobiologist presented her findings on the Jovian moon's subsurface ocean, detailing anomalous isotopic ratios. Her hypothesis, that exotic extremophiles might metabolize these compounds, seemed genuinely plausible to the peer review board, their collective unease about the expedition's immense cost momentarily abating.

The alchemist painstakingly documented his latest experiment, a concoction of lunar dew and solidified starlight. While his colleagues remained skeptical, muttering about folly, his methodical approach and meticulously recorded observations made his claims of transmuting lead into an aurous metal seem remarkably plausible.

The eccentric ornithologist's explanation for the flock of flamingos appearing in his backyard—that they were merely on a "avian sabbatical" from their usual equatorial abodes, seeking a more avant-garde aesthetic—was, despite its outlandishness, remarkably plausible, given his propensity for flamboyant sartorial choices and his penchant for esoteric horticultural endeavors.

The investigator found a series of peculiar discrepancies in the financial records. At first, the explanations offered seemed somewhat dubious, but upon deeper scrutiny, they began to appear plausible. The accountant’s alibi, while initially suspect, ultimately held up under rigorous examination, making it a likely scenario.

Difficulty

Normal — Everyday words worth reinforcing.

Appears in

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