conjecture
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: human-sciences
linguistics
mathematics
sciences
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, deject, abject, surjection, bijection, interject.
Compare typologically Russian прики́дывать (prikídyvatʹ) (akin to кида́ть (kidátʹ)).
Inflected forms:
form: conjectures
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: conjectures
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: conjecturing
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: conjectured
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: conjectured
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: A statement or an idea which is unproven, but is thought to be true; a guess.
pos: noun
tags: countable
formal
uncountable
examples: I explained it, but it is pure conjecture whether he understood, or not.
gloss: A supposition based upon incomplete evidence; a hypothesis.
pos: noun
tags: countable
formal
uncountable
examples: The physicist used his conjecture about subatomic particles to design an experiment.
gloss: A statement likely to be true based on available evidence, but which has not been formally proven.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
gloss: Interpretation of signs and omens.
pos: noun
tags: countable
obsolete
uncountable
gloss: To guess; to venture an unproven idea.
pos: verb
tags: formal
intransitive
examples: I do not know if it is true; I am simply conjecturing here.
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.
gloss: To infer on slight evidence; to guess at.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: February 22, 1685, Robert South, All Contingences under the Direction of God's Providence (sermon preached at Westminster Abbey)
"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.
Related words: conject
conjectural
Derived words: 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
Lehmer's conjecture
Leopoldt's conjecture
Mach's conjecture
metaconjecture
Meyniel's conjecture
Oesterlé-Masser conjecture
Pacman 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
misconjecture
conjecturability
conjecturable
unconjectured
Translations: