What is plausible is valid or acceptable.
Plausible is that which deserves to receive applause , according to the first meaning of the concept recognized by the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) . The etymology of the term takes us to the Latin plausibilis , an adjective that comes from the verb plaudere (which can be translated as "to clap" ).
The most common use of the notion today, however, is associated with what is acceptable, valid or credible . For example: "The accused offered a plausible explanation and the investigators decided to release him" , "It is not plausible that someone who claims to earn a thousand pesos a month has a Ferrari and lives in a mansion" , "I decided to accept his proposal because he gave me several reasons." plausible statements about the convenience of developing the project .
It can be said, in short, that something plausible is what sounds logical and, therefore, can be believed or accepted. The opposite of plausible would be incredible or implausible .
Example of plausible
Suppose a worker arrives late to work and his boss asks him for an explanation. The employee can assure that he was traveling by train to work when an accident occurred, which is why he was delayed. This justification for the delay is plausible. On the other hand, if the worker points out that, when he was about to enter the company , he was abducted by aliens who, half an hour later, returned him to Earth, the argument is not plausible.
It is important to highlight that the qualification of a fact or a theory as plausible does not indicate its veracity , but rather that what is analyzed is probable but still remains within the realm of the possible .
Pausible and possible are not synonyms.
A common confusion
As is often the case with many pairs of similar-looking terms, many people confuse plausible and possible and use them interchangeably. Having read the previous paragraphs, which include, among other explanations, the meanings of the RAE dictionary, it goes without saying that these are not synonyms; However, since they are words that can appear in the same contexts , it is difficult to eliminate the error.
This confusion is also fueled by another misconception: that plausible is a "cultured" or "higher" version of the term possible , something that leads certain people to lean towards its use to appear to be of a higher intellectual level. Far from realizing the humiliation they are subjecting themselves to by saying that "something is plausible" when they really mean "possible," they proudly abuse this and other semantic errors from the rooftops.
However, like any linguistic confusion, there are reasons behind it that, once analyzed, should enrich our knowledge of the language and avoid future mistakes. In more than one case, the use of said terms can occur in the same sentence to express an opinion or qualification, such as occurs when studying a hypothesis.
A hypothesis can be plausible if it proposes a convincing, admissible assumption that at first glance is acceptable, even before carrying out the necessary tests to confirm its accuracy or veracity; On the other hand, it would not be correct to say that the hypothesis is possible, since, in any case, this adjective should be used to qualify its verification through an experiment, for example.
In summary, a series of statements are plausible if they express acceptable, admissible facts or concepts; The veracity of the latter, for its part, is what can be classified as possible or impossible. Let's look at one last example to clearly illustrate the differences: given the excess of cars in a city, the idea of manufacturing flying vehicles to free up the streets is plausible, since it is recommended; However, carrying it out immediately is not possible, since the costs would be too high and the necessary technology is not yet available.