INFER • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Infer

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/ɪnfˈər/ Listen

verb

Infer v. t. (past & past part. inferred; pres. part. inferring)

To bring on; to induce; to occasion. (Obs.)

To offer, as violence. (Obs.)

To bring forward, or employ as an argument; to adduce; to allege; to offer. (Obs.) "Full well hath Clifford played the orator, Inferring arguments of mighty force."

To derive by deduction or by induction; to conclude or surmise from facts or premises; to accept or derive, as a consequence, conclusion, or probability; as, I inferred his determination from his silence. "To infer is nothing but by virtue of one proposition laid down as true, to draw in another as true." "Such opportunities always infer obligations."

To show; to manifest; to prove. (Obs.) "The first part is not the proof of the second, but rather contrariwise, the second inferreth well the first." "This doth infer the zeal I had to see him."

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Etymology of 'Infer'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Infer" Quotes from Famous Books

... made to induce Congress to exercise this power. The applications for the construction of roads and canals which were formerly multiplied upon your files are no longer presented, and we have good reason to infer that the current public sentiment has become so decided against the pretension as effectually to discourage its reassertion. So thinking, I derive the greatest satisfaction from the conviction that thus much at least has been secured upon ...

— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... have my reader infer from this, that I at all think it likely, a young maid of fourteen would fall in love without asking her grandmother's leave—the thing itself is not ...

— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... in comedy, and indeed in comedy which bordered on farce. But we are inclined to infer from some passages, both in Cecilia and Camilla, that she might have attained equal distinction in the pathetic. We have formed this judgment, less from those ambitious scenes of distress which lie near the catastrophe of each of those novels, than from some exquisite strokes of natural tenderness ...

— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the worst-administered parts of Spain, except those which fell into the hands of the Turks. "Whenever numerous troops of banditti, multiplied by success and impunity, publicly defy, instead of eluding, the justice of their country, we may safely infer that the excessive weakness of the government is felt and abused by the lowest ranks of the community," is the judgment passed by Gibbon on the disorders of Sicily in the reign of the emperor Gallienus. This weakness has not always been a sign of real feebleness in ...

— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... have, from these facts, been led to the conclusion that the use of honey-secreting glands in plants is to attract insects that will protect the flower buds and leaves from being injured by herbivorous insects and mammals; but I do not mean to infer that this is the use of all glands, for many of the small appendicular bodies, called "glands" by botanists, do not secrete honey. The common dog-rose of England is furnished with glands on the stipules, and in other species they are more numerous, until ...

— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

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