Today's Word

Verisimilitude

vair-ih-sih-MIL-ih-tood

Definition

(noun) The quality of appearing to be true or real; the convincing believability of a story, account, or portrayal.

Example

The novelist spent months researching 19th-century London to give her story the verisimilitude it needed.

Word Origin

From Latin verisimilitudo, built from verus (“true”) + similis (“like, similar”) + the suffix -tudo (forming abstract nouns). Essentially, it means “the likeness of truth.” The word entered English in the 17th century, first appearing in literary and rhetorical criticism.

Fun Fact

Aristotle was one of the first thinkers to formally discuss this concept — he argued in the Poetics that a believable impossibility is more valuable in storytelling than an unbelievable possibility. In other words, a story that feels true matters more than one that’s merely factually accurate. This idea shaped centuries of Western storytelling. Method acting, elaborate film sets, historical fiction research, and immersive video game worlds are all modern descendants of the ancient pursuit of verisimilitude.

Previous Words

Wheedle

Today's Word

Wheedle

WEE-dul

Definition

(verb) To coax or persuade someone into doing something through flattery, soft words, or gentle persistent manipulation.

Example

She had wheedled the extension out of her professor so smoothly that he’d agreed before he realized he’d been asked — which was precisely the point.

Word Origin

Wheedle is of uncertain origin — possibly from the German wedeln, meaning “to wag the tail” or “to fan,” suggesting the fawning, ingratiating behavior of an animal seeking favor. Another theory connects it to the Old English wǣdlian, meaning “to beg.” It entered English in the 17th century, and whatever its precise origin, its sense has remained remarkably stable: the soft, persistent, strategically flattering approach to getting what you want from someone who might not give it if asked directly.

Fun Fact

The psychology of wheedling has been studied extensively under the clinical term “ingratiation” — and the findings are more validating than most people would like. Research by social psychologist Edward Jones in the 1960s found that strategic flattery, opinion conformity, and favor-doing — the core toolkit of the wheedler — are remarkably effective at generating genuine positive feelings in the target, even when the target is aware the ingratiation is strategic. The implication is uncomfortable: knowing you’re being wheedled doesn’t reliably protect you from it, which is either a testament to the sophistication of the technique or a fairly unflattering comment on human susceptibility to being told what we want to hear.

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Verisimilitude

Definition

Example

Word Origin

Previous Words

Wheedle

Wheedle

Definition

Example

Word Origin

Wheedle

Callow

Pernicious

Derivation

Tautological