verisimilitude
noun

- the quality of seeming true or of having the appearance of reality

Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary

—
WORD ORIGIN

Verisimilitude came to English via the French verisimilitude (1540s) and further from the Latin verisimilitudo (a likeness to the truth), which combines “very” (true) and “similis” (similar).

—
SIMULATING REALITY

Standards of verisimilitude have greatly changed over time. French audiences in the 1890s watching the first silent film footage of an oncoming train ran screaming from the theaters. Marlon Brando’s early film work was considered groundbreaking in its realism to audiences of the time, whereas those same performances are now considered rather too theatrical.

In his blockbuster film Titanic, James Cameron used extraordinary special effects to bring millions of young moviegoers to tears when the lead character Jack (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) slipped under the water near the film’s conclusion.

—
SYNONYMS

- the property of seeming true, of resembling reality:

authenticity, credibility, epistemological dualism, factualism, faithfulness, fidelity, genuineness, identicalness, indirect realism, lifelikeness, likelihood, likeliness, likeness, literalism, model, naturalism, naturalness, parallelism, plausibility, realism, reality, representationalism, reproduction, resemblance, semblance, telling it like it is, truth, truthfulness, veracity, verism, verismo, verity, virtual reality

—
SMUGGLE OWAD into an English conversation, say something like

“Modern cinematography creates so much VERISIMILITUDE, one can forget sitting in the cinema.”

—
HERZLICHEN DANK to all readers helping me keep OWAD alive with single or monthly donations at:

https://donorbox.org/please-become-a-friend-of-owad-3

and,

Paul Smith, IBAN: DE75 7316 0000 0002 5477 40