{"id":12690,"date":"2016-08-06T11:34:47","date_gmt":"2016-08-06T10:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=12690"},"modified":"2016-08-06T11:34:47","modified_gmt":"2016-08-06T10:34:47","slug":"suspending-disbelief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=12690","title":{"rendered":"Suspending disbelief"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the things we talked about in the French conversation group this week was suspending disbelief, which is <strong>accepter les invraisemblances<\/strong> in French. That is &#8220;accepting the improbabilities&#8221;. Another way to say this in French is <em>suspension d&#8217;incr\u00e9dulit\u00e9<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The word <em>invraisemblance<\/em> also means unlikeliness or inverisimilitude. Related words include <em>invraisemblable<\/em> (unlikely, incredible, implausible, improbable) and <em>invraisemblablement<\/em> (implausible, unlikely).<\/p>\n<p>Its antonym is <em>vraisemblance<\/em> (plausibility, verisimilitude, likelihood). It comes from <em>vrai<\/em> (true, real), plus <em>sembler<\/em> (to seem).<\/p>\n<p>Expressions incorporating vraisemblance include:<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; selon toute vraisemblance = in all likelihood, apparently<br \/>\n&#8211; essai de vraisemblance = plausibility test<br \/>\n&#8211; contr\u00f4le de vraisemblance = absurdity check<\/p>\n<p>Sources: <a href=\"http:\/\/dictionary.reverso.net\/french-english\/vraisemblance\">Reverso<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.linguee.com\/french-english\/translation\/invraisemblance.html\">Linguee<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/fr.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Suspension_consentie_de_l%27incr%C3%A9dulit%C3%A9\">Wikipedia<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Apparently the English phrase <strong>suspension of disbelief<\/strong> was coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1817 in his <em>Biographia literaria or biographical sketches of my literary life and opinions<\/em><\/p>\n<p>See: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.phrases.org.uk\/meanings\/suspension-of-disbelief.html\">http:\/\/www.phrases.org.uk\/meanings\/suspension-of-disbelief.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Are there interesting ways to express this idea in other languages?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the things we talked about in the French conversation group this week was suspending disbelief, which is accepter les invraisemblances in French. That is &#8220;accepting the improbabilities&#8221;. Another way to say this in French is suspension d&#8217;incr\u00e9dulit\u00e9. The word invraisemblance also means unlikeliness or inverisimilitude. Related words include invraisemblable (unlikely, incredible, implausible, improbable) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,111,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-french","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}