Most modern European languages have acquired a pair of synonyms corresponding to English probable and likely, French probable and vraisemblable, and so on.120 They are not native to any of these languages but are borrowings from the Scholastic probabilis and versimilis, themselves descended from the Greek pithanon and eikos via Cicero. Although the two Greek terms are not quite synonyms, the two in Latin and its derivatives are in practice perfectly synonymous, despite occasional individual attempts to find small differences between them.
