SPECULATE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Speculate

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/spˈɛkjəlˌeɪt/ Listen

Speculate

verb

(past & past part. speculated; pres. part. speculating)

To believe especially on uncertain or tentative grounds. Synonyms: conjecture, hypothecate, hypothesise, hypothesize, suppose, theorise, theorize.

Talk over conjecturally, or review in an idle or casual way and with an element of doubt or without sufficient reason to reach a conclusion.

Reflect deeply on a subject. Synonyms: chew over, contemplate, excogitate, meditate, mull, mull over, muse, ponder, reflect, ruminate, think over. "Philosophers have speculated on the question of God for thousands of years" , "The scientist must stop to observe and start to excogitate"

Invest at a risk. Synonym: job.

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Etymology of 'Speculate'

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"Speculate" Quotes from Famous Books

... together on the road, as we finally drive down the hill, their figures silhouetted against the sky. They have been on the whole pleased and awakened by their adventure; they will discuss and compare their emotions, finger their silver, wonder and speculate, and go their separate ways, convinced anew that the ways of the world and its worldlings ...

— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... appetize my hunger." As she betrayed a familiar knowledge of the tariff of an attractive confectioner, she was asked whether she and her sisters had been frequenting those little tables on their way from school. "I sometimes go in there, mother," she confessed; "but I generally speculate outside." ...

— The Children • Alice Meynell

... the scene and by the indescribable wildness of the Imam's chant. Paul, too, was silent, and, though far less able to feel such emotions than his elder brother, the sight of such unanimous and heart-felt devotion called up strange trains of thought in his mind, and forced him to speculate upon the qualities and the character which still survived in these hereditary enemies of his nation. It was not possible, he said to himself, that such men could ever be really conquered. They might be driven from ...

— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... he was dimly aware of a feeling toward the beautiful creature who walked at his side day after day, sharing without complaint hardship and fatigue that sorely taxed his own endurance, that was something more than mere regard, and he had begun to speculate vaguely on a possible future in which she became ...

— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... the loser for it, because "it interrupted that studious leisure for which nature seemed to have designed him, and in which alone he could have hoped to accomplish those literary projects which had flattered the ambition of his youthful genius." Now it is, of course, idle to speculate on the things that might have been. Kant was never forty miles from Konigsberg, and had Smith remained in Glasgow all his days there is no reason to doubt he could have produced works of lasting ...

— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

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