Truthfully, I find it reassuring to find the exact phrase in Larousse. It gives me more confidence in the French translations overall and the French word selection seems less random. I’m glad the senior members and French speakers jump in and say their comments about it, too. Just because it is in the dictionary doesn’t mean that people use it that way, lol.
A new Larousse dictionary was released this year, but the app (which is very good), is from the 2014 dictionary. So I am a little disappointed at that.
Given the English sentence, I think the translation is fine. “Selon toute vraisemblance” can also be used and if I had to guess, I’d say it may be slightly more common, but really in spoken French I don’t think most people would use either of these.
There is also “sans doute” which is a bit of weird one… Literately, it means “without doubt”, but in French we often use it, even if we’re not 100% sure about something. So more often than not, “sans doute” is used to mean “probably” or “very probably”.
So if you’re pretty sure it’s going to rain, you could say:
“Il va sans doute pleuvoir cette après-midi.”
Or if someone tells you that something’s going to happen and you’re not 100% sure / convinced it will, you could reply “Sans doute…”, kind of meaning “I guess so…”
I checked quickly on the “Larousse” website and found this Larousse app on the playstore:
I don’t know if that’s the app you use, but they say this one was updated in 2023:
I’ve used this dictionary and it is ok, but the one I use most is the unabridged version which has a lot more content and costs only a couple bucks more. I don’t often buy apps because free aps will usually do everything I need. In this case, the Larousse Unabridged French-English dictionary blows everything else away (except for the all French versions) and IMHO is worth every penny.
The copyright is marked 2014. I read about some of the new words that are included and they are not in this app. It probably doesn’t matter much. I hope they update the online dictionary at least.
The new words are in the French only Larousse app. Copyright is 2025 and it shows the new dictionary was added 9 months ago. So that is good.
The unabridged dictionary that I like so well and has so much content has not been updated for 10 years, so that is a little disturbing. I will still use it, but I have to remember to check the French only Dictionary.
On the plus side, it may well be the best one out there still. Robert-Collins have their own “concise” dictionary app, - fewer words, but it may be good as well.
You can’t really go too wrong with Larousse or Robert…
