Sunday Word: Verisimilitude
verisimilitude [ ver-uh-si-mil-i-tood, -tyood]
noun:
1 the appearance or semblance of truth
2 something, as an assertion, having merely the appearance of truth
Examples:
He opens the novel with a preface about its source material and adds little details of verisimilitude - footnotes, sketches - throughout. (Loren M Hansen, William Boyd: 40 years on from my first novel, my imagination is cranking up better than ever, The Irish Times, October 2022)
In the past, Pelevin’s diagnoses have read as farcical send-ups of this cultural stance: as a diagnostician, he was never as dedicated to verisimilitude as he was to puns. (Maya Vinokour, Conspiratorial Realism: On Vladimir Sorokin, Victor Pelevin, and Russia's Post-Postmodern Turn, Los Angeles Review of Books, August 2017)
The author uses regional language to lend verisimilitude to the narrative, but readers not fluent in French or Hindi find it hard to follow certain conversations as there are no translations. (Deepti, Passing through cruel theatre of life, Tribune India, October 2012)
Is realism, 'lifeness' or verisimilitude a necessary quality of good literature? (Nigel Beale, The ancient art of keeping it real, The Guardian, October 2008)
This was verisimilitude - the holding of the true mirror to actual society. (George Saintsbury, The English Novel)
Origin:
'appearance of truth or reality, likelihood,' c. 1600, from French verisimilitude (1540s), from Latin verisimilitudo 'likeness to truth,' from veri, genitive of verum, neuter of verus 'true' (from PIE root were-o- 'true, trustworthy') + similis 'like, resembling, of the same kind,' (Online Etymology Dictionary)
From its roots, verisimilitude means basically 'similarity to the truth'. Most fiction writers and filmmakers aim at some kind of verisimilitude to give their stories an air of reality. They need not show something actually true, or even very common, but simply something believable. A mass of good details in a play, novel, painting, or film may add verisimilitude. A spy novel without some verisimilitude won't interest many readers, but a fantastical novel may not even attempt to seem true to life. (Merriam-Webster)