Proven vs Probable - What's the difference?
proven | probable |
Having been proved; having proved its value or truth.
*
English adjectives ending in -en
English irregular past participles
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Likely or most likely to be true.
Likely to happen.
Supporting, or giving ground for, belief, but not demonstrating.
(obsolete) Capable of being proved.
As a verb proven
is .As an adjective probable is
likely or most likely to be true.proven
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- It's a proven fact that morphine is a more effective painkiller than acetaminophen is.
- Mass lexical comparison is not a proven method for demonstrating relationships between languages.
Antonyms
* (having been proved) unprovenVerb
(head)Usage notes
As the past participle of prove, proven is often discouraged, with proved preferred – “have proved” rather than “have proven”. However, today in everyday use they are both used, about equally. Historically, proved'' is the older form, while proven''' arose as a Scottish variant – see . Used in legal writing from mid 17th century, it entered literary usage more slowly, only becoming significant in the 19th century, with the poet among the earliest frequent users (presumably for reasons of meter). In the 19th century, '''proven was widely discouraged, and remained significantly less common through the mid 20th century (''proved being used approximately four times as often), by the late 20th century it came to be used about equally. As an attributive adjective, proven is much more commonly used, and proved is widely considered an error – “a proven method”, not *“a proved method”.References
probable
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- It's probable that it will rain tomorrow.
- The probable source of the failure was the mass of feathers in the intake manifold.
- With all the support we have, success is looking probable .
- probable''' evidence; '''probable presumption
- (Blackstone)
