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Definition of "speculate" []

  • To meditate on a subject; reflect. (verb-intransitive)
  • To engage in a course of reasoning often based on inconclusive evidence. See Synonyms at think. (verb-intransitive)
  • To engage in the buying or selling of a commodity with an element of risk on the chance of profit. (verb-intransitive)
  • To assume to be true without conclusive evidence: speculated that high cholesterol was a contributing factor to the patient's health problems. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "speculate" in a sentence
  • "Yes, yes, but the freedom to speculate is essential --"
  • "The latter instinct, I would speculate, is the ability of mammals to deny the self in favor of the herd."
  • "Linking to the same Washington Post story, Crispin Sartwell, at his eyeofthestormblogs. com, writes: "this, we may speculate, is the reason that many prisoners of the u.s. will never be released: nothing they did before, but the secrets they learned in prison, the details of their own torture, present a security risk. we will not only torment you, we will detain/disappear you for having been tormented by us.""