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Dubious vs Plausible - What's the difference?

dubious | plausible |

As adjectives the difference between dubious and plausible

is that dubious is arousing doubt; questionable; open to suspicion while plausible is seemingly or apparently valid, likely, or acceptable; credible: a plausible excuse.

dubious

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Arousing doubt; questionable; open to suspicion.
  • After he made some dubious claims about the company, fewer people trusted him.
  • * 2011 , Nigel Jones, "A Tale of Two Scandals", History Today , February 2011, Vol. 61 Issue 2, pages 10–17
  • Evasive, womanising, boastful, malicious, untrustworthy, an inveterate gambler who combined his mediocre military career with running a high-class brothel, permanently cash strapped and viciously quarrelsome, his character is as dubious as his unsavoury appearance.
  • In disbelief; wavering, uncertain, or hesitating in opinion; inclined to doubt; undecided.
  • She was dubious about my plan at first, but later I managed to persuade her to cooperate.
  • * 2010 , John M. Broder, "Global Climate-Change Talks Begin in Cancun With More Modest Expectations", New York Times , November 30, Section A, Column 0, Foreign Desk, page 12
  • Last year, President Obama had large majorities in Congress and hopes of passing a comprehensive climate and energy bill. Next year, he faces a new Congress much more dubious about the reality of climate change and considerably more hostile to international efforts to deal with it.

    Derived terms

    * dubious honor / dubious honour * dubiously * dubiousness

    See also

    *

    plausible

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Seemingly or apparently valid, likely, or acceptable; credible: a plausible excuse.
  • *
  • In short, the twin assumptions that syntactic rules are category-based, and that there are a highly restricted finite set of categories in any natural language (perhaps no more than a dozen major categories), together with the assumption that the child either knows'' (innately) or ''learns (by experience) that all rules are structure-dependent ( =category-based), provide a highly plausible model of language acquisition, in which languages become learnable in a relatively short, finite period of time (a few years).
  • Obtaining approbation; specifically pleasing; apparently right; specious.
  • a plausible''' pretext; '''plausible''' manners; a '''plausible delusion
  • Using specious arguments or discourse. (rfv-sense)
  • a plausible speaker
  • (obsolete) Worthy of being applauded; praiseworthy; commendable; ready.
  • (Bishop Hacket)

    Derived terms

    * plausibility