Surmise vs Speculate - What's the difference?
surmise | speculate |
Thought, imagination, or conjecture, which may be based upon feeble or scanty evidence; suspicion; guess.
* Jonathan Swift
* 1919 ,
Reflection; thought; posit.
To conjecture, to opine or to posit with contestable premises.
To think, meditate or reflect on a subject; to consider, to deliberate or cogitate.
* Hawthorne
To make an inference based on inconclusive evidence; to surmise or conjecture.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-07, author=David Simpson
, volume=188, issue=26, page=36, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly)
, title= (intransitive, business, finance) To make a risky trade in the hope of making a profit; to venture or gamble.
As verbs the difference between surmise and speculate
is that surmise is to conjecture, to opine or to posit with contestable premises while speculate is to think, meditate or reflect on a subject; to consider, to deliberate or cogitate.As a noun surmise
is thought, imagination, or conjecture, which may be based upon feeble or scanty evidence; suspicion; guess.surmise
English
Noun
(en noun)- surmises of jealousy or of envy
- No man ought to be charged with principles he actually disowns, unless his practices contradict his profession; not upon small surmises .
- The meeting had been devoid of incident. No word had been said to give me anything to think about, and any surmises I might make were unwarranted. I was intrigued.
- (Shakespeare)
Verb
(surmis)External links
* * ----speculate
English
Verb
(speculat)- It is remarkable that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society.
Fantasy of navigation, passage=It is tempting to speculate about the incentives or compulsions that might explain why anyone would take to the skies in [the] basket [of a balloon]: perhaps out of a desire to escape the gravity of this world or to get a preview of the next; […].}}