Adjective: probable
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
Perifrastic
| Comparative | more probable |
| Superlative | most probable |
Sample Sentences
-
It's probable that it will rain tomorrow.
-
The probable source of the failure was the mass of feathers in the intake manifold.
-
A major accident and embezzlement of its funds seem to have been the only disasters it escaped; and as to the latter, the most probable reason is that it never had any quantity of funds worth embezzling. [1959 October 26, Michael Robbins, “The Isle of Wight (Newport Junction) Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 721:]
-
With all the support we have, success is looking probable.
-
probable evidence [1765–1769, William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, (please specify |book=I to IV), Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] Clarendon Press, →OCLC:]
-
From an examination of the Teutonic words for "temple" Grimm has made it probable that amongst the Germans the oldest sanctuaries were natural woods. [1890, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, volume 2, page 8:]
Adjectives inflected like probable
priest-ridden,
unreposed,
evadible,
dissentious,
dissentient,
unforesighted,
egocentrical,
unephemeral,
unennobling,
mensuralist,
flocculent,
unseductive,
whoopsy,
whooshy,
surrogate,
Nicodian,
unrepaired,
prismatoidal,
renorenal,
unseducible, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
From Middle English probable, from Old French probable, from Latin probābilis (“that may be proved, credible”), from probāre (“to test, examine”); see probe, probity, prove. Compare recent doublet provable. See: Latin Adjectives '
probābilis'.