SPECULATE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Speculate

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/spˈɛkjəlˌeɪt/ Listen

verb

Speculate v. t. To consider attentively; as, to speculate the nature of a thing. (R.)

Speculate v. i. (past & past part. speculated; pres. part. speculating)

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. "It is remarkable that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most pefect quietude to the external regulations of society."

(Philos.) To view subjects from certain premises given or assumed, and infer conclusions respecting them a priori.

(Com.) To purchase with the expectation of a contingent advance in value, and a consequent sale at a profit; often, in a somewhat depreciative sense, of unsound or hazardous transactions; as, to speculate in coffee, in sugar, or in bank stock.

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Etymology of 'Speculate'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Speculate" Quotes from Famous Books

... was brief, but clear and well imagined. He invited capitalists not to speculate in the lottery, but to guarantee it for a certain sum. In the case of the lottery's losing, each guarantor would have to share in paying according to the sum named, and in like manner they would ...

— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... thing to theorize, to speculate, to advise, when the Prioress was safe in her Nunnery. It was quite another, to know that she was being carried through the streets of Worcester, helpless, upon a stretcher; that when that blue pall was lifted, she would find herself ...

— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... Neddie Benson went over the side with a prayer to speed him. We were homeward bound with all sail set, but things that actually had happened already seemed incredible, and concerning the future we could only speculate. ...

— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... father had gone to pay the morning visit to the printing shops, he ran out to post the letter himself. He could not be contented until it was in the post. Now, when he saw men of about his own class and age in the street, he would speculate upon their experiences in the romance of women. And it did genuinely seem to him impossible that anybody else in a town like Bursley could have passed through an episode so exquisitely strange and beautiful as that through which he was passing. Yet his reason told him that ...

— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... interested him—it had interested the colonel too. The diamondsmiths' premises in Regent Street had been burgled the night before and the contents of the safe cleared. The colonel had arrested his flow of vituperation, to speculate as to the "artist" who had carried out this ...

— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace

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