# conjecture
## English
### Etymology

From Old French, from Latin coniectūra (“a guess”), from coniectus, perfect passive participle of cōniciō (“throw or cast together; guess”), from con- (“together”) + iaciō (“throw, hurl”); see jet. Compare adjective, eject, inject, project, reject, subject, object, trajectory.

### Pronunciation

* (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /kənˈd͡ʒɛk.t͡ʃə(ɹ)/
* (General American, Canada) IPA: /kənˈd͡ʒɛk.t͡ʃɚ/
** Audio (California):(file)
* (General Australian, New Zealand) IPA: /kənˈd͡ʒek.t͡ʃə(ɹ)/
** Audio (Queensland):(file)

### Noun

conjecture (countable and uncountable, plural conjectures)
* (formal) A statement or an idea which is unproven, but is thought to be true; a guess.
    I explained it, but it is pure conjecture whether he understood, or not.
* (formal) A supposition based upon incomplete evidence; a hypothesis.
    The physicist used his conjecture about subatomic particles to design an experiment.
* (mathematics, linguistics) A statement likely to be true based on available evidence, but which has not been formally proven.
* (obsolete) Interpretation of signs and omens.

#### Synonyms

* See also Thesaurus:supposition

#### Derived terms

* abc conjecture
* Beal conjecture
* Beal's conjecture
* Brocard's conjecture
* Collatz conjecture
* conjecturingly
* Cramér's conjecture
* Dickson's conjecture
* Dixmier conjecture
* double bubble conjecture
* Elliott-Halberstam conjecture
* Fuglede's conjecture
* Gilbreath's conjecture
* Goldbach's conjecture
* Heawood conjecture
* Hedetniemi's conjecture
* honeycomb conjecture
* Ilieff's conjecture
* Jacobian conjecture
* Keller's conjecture
* Langlands conjecture
* Legendre's conjecture
* Mach's conjecture
* metaconjecture
* Meyniel's conjecture
* misconjecture
* Oesterlé-Masser conjecture
* Poincaré conjecture
* Polignac's conjecture
* Pólya's conjecture
* Ramanujan conjecture
* Ramanujan-Petersson conjecture
* Ryu-Takayanagi conjecture
* Sendov's conjecture
* Singmaster's conjecture
* SYZ conjecture
* Szpiro's conjecture
* Thurston's geometrization conjecture
* twin prime conjecture
* Zarankiewicz's crossing number conjecture

#### Related terms

* conject
* conjectural

#### Translations
### Verb

conjecture (third-person singular simple present conjectures, present participle conjecturing, simple past and past participle conjectured)
* (formal, intransitive) To guess; to venture an unproven idea.
    I do not know if it is true; I am simply conjecturing here.
** 1952 December, 'Mercury', “Modern French Locomotive Performance”, in Railway Magazine, page 804:What could have been done by such a machine downhill can only be conjectured, for the maximum speed was restricted rigidly to 80 m.p.h.
* (transitive) To infer on slight evidence; to guess at.
** February 22, 1685, Robert South, All Contingences under the Direction of God's Providence (sermon preached at Westminster Abbey)
** 1838 (date written), L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XIX, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], published 1842, →OCLC, page 243:"Most likely he who is the shorter of the two;—no! he goes in the first, and is, of course, the eldest; but we have no time for conjecturing now." Human reason can then, at the best, but conjecture what will be.

#### Derived terms

* conjecturability
* conjecturable
* misconjecture
* unconjectured

#### Translations
### Further reading

* William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “conjecture”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
* Douglas Harper (2001–2025) “conjecture”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
* “conjecture”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

## French
### Pronunciation

* IPA: /kɔ̃.ʒɛk.tyʁ/
* Audio:(file)

### Etymology 1

Learned borrowing from Latin coniectūra.

#### Noun

conjecture f (plural conjectures)
* conjecture
    Near-synonyms: hypothèse, supputation

##### Usage notes

* Not to be confused with conjoncture.

##### Derived terms

* conjecturer

#### Further reading

* “conjecture”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

### Etymology 2

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

#### Verb

conjecture
* inflection of conjecturer:
** first/third-person singular present indicative/subjunctive
** second-person singular imperative

## Latin
### Participle

conjectūre
* vocative masculine singular of conjectūrus

## Portuguese
### Verb

conjecture
* inflection of conjecturar:
** first/third-person singular present subjunctive
** third-person singular imperative