From Wiktionary:
1. The property of seeming true, of resembling reality; resemblance to reality, realism.
2. A statement which merely appears to be true.
3. (fiction) Faithfulness to its own rules; internal cohesion.
From Vocabulary.com:
Verisimilitude comes from the Latin verisimilitudo "likeness to truth" and is used to describe stories.
From LiteraryDevices.net:
The theory of verisimilitude comes from a Platonic and Aristotelian dramatic theory called “mimesis.” According to this theory, a work of art should convince the audience by imitating and representing nature, and having a basis in reality. The playwright, conforming to the above-mentioned theory, had to draw themes from sources well-known to the common people of his time, and maintain the unities of action, place, and time. Besides, he had to bring a realistic union between the style and the subject.
The theory of verisimilitude leads to the idea of “suspension of disbelief,” or “willing suspension of disbelief,” a term coined in 1817 by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was of the opinion that, if a writer was able to fill his work with a “human interest and a semblance of truth,” the readers would willingly suspend or delay their judgment in relation to the doubtfulness of a narrative.
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