Lexic.us

Definition of Speculate

1. Verb. To believe especially on uncertain or tentative grounds. "They speculate that there was a traffic accident "; "Scientists supposed that large dinosaurs lived in swamps"

2. Verb. 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. "We were speculating whether the President had to resign after the scandal"

3. Verb. Reflect deeply on a subject. "The scientist must stop to observe and start to excogitate"

4. Verb. Invest at a risk. "I bought this house not because I want to live in it but to sell it later at a good price, so I am speculating"

Definition of Speculate

1. v. i. To consider by turning a subject in the mind, and viewing it in its different aspects and relations; to meditate; to contemplate; to theorize; as, to speculate on questions in religion; to speculate on political events.

2. v. t. To consider attentively; as, to speculate the nature of a thing.

Definition of Speculate

1. Verb. (intransitive) to think, meditate or reflect on a subject; to deliberate or cogitate ¹

2. Verb. (intransitive) to make an inference based on inconclusive evidence; to surmise or conjecture ¹

3. Verb. (intransitive business finance) to make a risky trade in the hope of making a profit; to venture or gamble ¹

¹ Source: wiktionary.com

Definition of Speculate

1. [v -LATED, -LATING, -LATES]

Lexicographical Neighbors of Speculate

spectrum analysis spectrum analyzer spectrum analyzers spectrum disorder spectrum line spectrums specula specular specular glare specular image

specularities specularity specularization specularizations specularly speculate (current term) speculated speculates speculating speculation

speculations speculatist speculatists speculative speculative damages speculative fiction speculative fictions speculative philosophies speculative philosophy speculatively

Literary usage of Speculate

Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:

1. Hunt's Merchants' Magazine and Commercial Review by Isaac Smith Homans, Freeman Hunt, Thomas Prentice Kettell, William Buck Dana (1850)
"Under all these circumstances favoring the continued abundance of money, there is a growing disposition to speculate ; real estate, and stocks particularly, ..."

2. Supreme Court Reporter by Robert Desty, United States Supreme Court, West Publishing Company (1908)
"... speculate. When we see'that the opinion» of the court upon the constitutional ... speculate ..."

3. The Living Age by Making of America Project, Eliakim Littell, Robert S. Littell (1887)
"His habit of searching for first principles led him, as far back as 1854, to speculate on the relations among the atomic weights of the chemical elements, ..."

4. Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology: Including Many of the Principal by James Mark Baldwin (1901)
"... the impulse to count all sorts of objects and speculate uselessly and endlessly on numerical relations. Such tendencies as coprolalia, the impulse to ..."

5. The Merchants' Magazine and Commercial Review by Isaac Smith Homans, William B. Dana (1870)
"... TO speculate IN WALL STREET. When Mr. Punch undertook to give " advice to people about to marry," he doubtless thought of several volumes of wisdom, ..."

6. A Treatise on the Law of Executors and Administrators by Edward Vaughan Williams, Walter Vere Vaughan Williams (1877)
"(7) The court cannot speculate upon what the deceased party would or would not have done; but in these cases the inquiry must be, whether at his death a ..."

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