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.

• "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.""