verisimilitude

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verisimilitude \ve.ʁi.si.mi.li.tyd\ féminin

1. Graphie ancienne de vérisimilitude : Apparence de vérité, proximité de la vérité.
   • Cette apparence de verisimilitude qui les faict prendre plustost à gauche qu’à droicte, augmentez la ; cette once de verisimilitude, qui incline la balance, multipliez là de cent, de mille onces ; il en adviendra en fin, que la balance prendra party tout à faict, et arrestera un chois et une verité entiere. — (Michel de Montaigne, Essais de Michel de Montaigne, 1818)
2. Assertion qui semble être vraie.

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• France (Lyon) : écouter « verisimilitude »

(Date à préciser) Du latin verisimilitudo.

verisimilitude \ˌvɛɹ.ɪ.sɪ.ˈmɪl.ɪ.tjuːd\

1. Vérisimilitude.
   • Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. — (Gilbert & Sullivan, The Mikado, acte II, 1885)

     Détail simplement corroboratif, destiné à insuffler de la vérisimilitude artistique à un récit autrement lisse et peu convaincant.

   • This presentation of Paul, too, in spite of its greater verisimilitude, is one that cannot be held for historical as a whole. — (Thomas Whittaker, The Origins of Christianity: With an Outline of Van Manen’s Analysis of the Pauline Literature, 1904)

     Cet exposé de Paul, également, en dépit de sa plus grande vérisimilitude, ne peut pas être considéré globalement comme historique.

   • He must have promptly rejected an alternative explanation which would better fulfill the demands of verisimilitude (“My wife, poor thing, in her nervous condition, now is afflicted also with sleepwalking!”), seeing the laborious tasks to which the resumed somnambulist devotes herself: kneeling at the edge of a pit, she anoints the earth with murky philters (unless the implements she holds in her hand are to be interpreted actually as acetylene torches scattering sparks, to melt the lead seals of a coffin). — (Italo Calvino, The Castle of Crossed Destinies, partie 2, chapitre 5, 1969 ; traduit de l’italien par William Weaver, 1977)
   • My words do not proclaim the truth, like a Pythian priestess; but I conjecture what is probable, like a plain man; and where, I ask, am I to search for anything more than verisimilitude? And again: The characteristic of the Academy is never to interpose one’s judgment, to approve what seems most probable, to compare together different opinions, to see what may be advanced on either side and to leave one’s listeners free to judge without pretending to dogmatize. — (« Academy, Greek », Encyclopædia Britannica, 1911)