Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Unlikely to take place or be true.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Not probable; not likely to be true; not to be expected under the circumstances of the case.
Wiktionary
- adj. Not likely to be true.
- adj. Not likely to happen.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Not probable; unlikely to be true; not to be expected under the circumstances or in the usual course of events.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. having a probability too low to inspire belief
- adj. too improbable to admit of belief
- adj. not likely to be true or to occur or to have occurred
Examples
“He says creating theater out of the improbable is a fundamental part of their mission.”
“The Massachusetts Democrat tells his version of the American rags to riches story, chronicling what he dubs his "improbable" rise from a broken home and poverty on the Chicago's South Side to the upper echelons of American politics.”
“I thought about the conditions necessary for life to bloom in improbable places like Cd. Juárez, Culiacán, Terlingua, East.”
“The change which I propose, is to substitute the word improbable, for miraculous.”
“All I know is that the article confused the word improbable with impossible.”
“And second, it is improbable that all the English words listed by Crowley as having come from Irish or Gaulish actually did so.”
“That looks highly improbable, which is why the chancellor will announce both tax increases and benefit cuts on Tuesday.”
“At age 27, he was defined as the improbable hero who beat the system.”
“Following a good plan of always handing on any rumour, however improbable, which is of a thoroughly cheerful nature I said, referring to a report that was current in the messes that morning, 'They say Lord”
“If the story is a strange one, he doubtless reflected, 'truth is stranger than fiction;' and if it is intrinsically and evidently improbable, that is the very reason why a poet would not have invented it.”
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘improbable’.
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EN - fine scholarly language
exhort, accretion, twenty-nine, atrophy, additive, brilliantly, interreligious, empiricism, pathologic, limitless, half-century, vigilant and 488 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11250 more...
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GRE
predilection, explicit, appeal, supplication, appealing, enchanting, ovation, pertinent, apropos, opportunely, applicable, germane and 381 more...
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Scaryland
white rabbit, formaldehyde, distributed world..., pathetic fallacy, candy, reality, playing people, improbable, absurd, bleep, real world, demagogic and 5 more...
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kingofbash's Words
bash, poleaxed, salacious, libertine, charlatan, aplomb, fortuitous, finagle, apoplectic, debutante, carte blanche, aardvark and 472 more...
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farfetched
farfetched, improbable, long shot, implausible, don't hold your b..., beggar belief, unbelievable, unlikely, inconceivable, pipe dream
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Listless
Nowhere else to put these yet.
sibilant, cloying, pithy, apologia, odyssey, amanuensis, pleasantries, ginormous, burnish, sojourn, quonset, over-under and 217 more...
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Predictionary
EXPECTED vs. SURPRISE
aberration, exception, spontaneous, synchronicity, startle, waylay, prophecy, zemblanity, inadvertent, atavism, sui generis, anomaly and 127 more...
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my dictionary
able, abnormally, abroad, absent, abstract, acceptable, acceptance, access, accessible, accession, according to, account and 4551 more...
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The things they carried (List 2)
Listening to this as an audio book for the second time. Tim O'Brien uses simple words and phrases to great effect. Very few unfamilar and big words . The writing style reminds me of words from Joh...
The, Things, They, Carried, meant, fond, By necessity,, presented to him, far beyond, against the brick..., reaching, taut and 2940 more...
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New GRE Preparation List
All the words which I encounter during my GRE studies. :)
rhetoric, errant, arrant, artless, artful, ephemeral, libel, rhapsody, cloy, conjecture, relegate, aberrant and 927 more...
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wackyvorlon's list
herein, execrable, extirpate, ameliorate, sawbuck, obstreperous, truculent, festinate, exiguous, exsanguinate, vehement, vex and 135 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate, amalgam and 1781 more...
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The Letter M
This video comes straight from the Uncanny Valley with a tribute to the 13th letter of the alphabet.
marvelous, magnificent, impossible, improbable, m and ms, mississippi, maybe, mommy, monkey, moo, mayonnaise, medicine and 6 more...
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MEC4 Lesson 152
cannonball, blow away, improbable, hardened, handicapper, regarded, defiance, obstacle, destined, cargo, cargo plane, Caracas and 49 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for improbable.
dailyword Holmes uses this word a lot. Sep 5, 2012
wackyvorlon Not very exotic, but darned useful I say. Sep 22, 2008