Word of the Week: Improbable

Exaggeration is a wonderful tool when it comes to embellishing a story or trying to win a friendly argument. It's never good when you're writing an article or trying to make a rational argument.

Probable is an Old French derivation of the Latin probabilis meaning "provable." Thus, an event that is probable is something that could happen but really doesn't have a high probability -- improbable, then, being the opposite.

This word, in my experience, gets replaced quite often with impossible, which means "incapable of occurring." Both come from similar Latin words (probabilis -- to try; possibilis -- to be able) but mean two very different things in contemporary language.

To say that something is impossible when there is, in fact, a chance of it happening is fallacious, a topic I'll cover in the very near future. So use them appropriately.