Word.ws English Dictionary

conjecture

Syllables: con·jec·tureUK/kənˈd͡ʒɛkt͡ʃə/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/kənˈd͡ʒekt͡ʃə/

conjecture noun: a statement or an idea which is unproven, but is thought to be true; a guess.

Noun

conjecture (countable and uncountable, plural conjectures)

  1. (formal) A statement or an idea which is unproven, but is thought to be true; a guess.
    • I explained it, but it is pure conjecture whether he understood, or not.
  2. (formal) A supposition based upon incomplete evidence; a hypothesis.
    • The physicist used his conjecture about subatomic particles to design an experiment.
  3. A statement likely to be true based on available evidence, but which has not been formally proven.
  4. (obsolete) Interpretation of signs and omens.

Verb

conjecture (third-person singular simple present conjectures, present participle conjecturing, simple past and past participle conjectured)

  1. (formal, intransitive) To guess; to venture an unproven idea.
    • I do not know if it is true; I am simply conjecturing here.
    • What could have been done by such a machine downhill can only be conjectured, for the maximum speed was restricted rigidly to 80 m.p.h.1952 December, 'Mercury', “Modern French Locomotive Performance”, in Railway Magazine, page 804
  2. (transitive) To infer on slight evidence; to guess at.
    • February 22, 1685, Robert South, All Contingences under the Direction of God's Providence (sermon preached at Westminster Abbey)
    • "Most likely he who is the shorter of the two;—no! he goes in the first, and is, of course, the eldest; but we have no time for conjecturing now."
      Human reason can then, at the best, but conjecture what will be.1838 (date written), L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XIX, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], published 1842, →OCLC, page 243

conjecture meaning in Tamil, Marathi, Urdu and Bengali

conjecture in Tamil

உய்த்துணர்வு, ஊகம், கணிப்பு, அனுமானம், முன்னுய்ப்பு

conjecture in Marathi

conjecture, dogmatic claim
अट्टाहास aṭṭāhās

conjecture in Urdu

conjecture
اٹکل aṭkal

conjecture in Bengali

অনুমান, আন্দাজ
More languagesFewer languages
conjecture in Malayalam
പ്രവചനം, അനുമാനം, ഊഹം
conjecture in Kannada
ತೋರಿಕೆ, ಅನಿಸಿಕೆ, ಎನಿಸಿಕೆ, ಊಹೆ
conjecture in Sanskrit
तर्क tarka
conjecture in Arabic
فَرَضِيَّة faraḍiyya, اِفْتِرَاض iftirāḍ, تَخْمِين taḵmīn

Examples of conjecture in a sentence

  • For a complete proof of the Poincaré conjecture, see Appendix C.
  • Wall-Sun-Sun primes are conjectured to exist, but no example has yet been found.
  • Tutte conjectured that all snarks have the Petersen graph as a graph minor.

All 40 example sentences with conjecture

Forms of conjecture

Noun
pluralconjectures
Verb
third-person singular presentconjectures
present participleconjecturing
past participleconjectured
pastconjectured

Plural of conjecture: conjectures

Origin of conjecture

From Old French, from Latin coniectūra (“a guess”), from coniectus, perfect passive participle of cōniciō (“throw or cast together; guess”), from con- (“together”) + iaciō (“throw, hurl”); see jet. Compare adjective, eject, inject, project, reject, subject, object, trajectory, deject, abject, surjection, bijection, interject. Compare typologically Russian прики́дывать (prikídyvatʹ) (akin to кида́ть (kidátʹ)).

Words formed from conjecture

Questions about conjecture

What does conjecture mean?
Conjecture means a statement or an idea which is unproven, but is thought to be true; a guess.
What is conjecture in Tamil?
Conjecture in Tamil is உய்த்துணர்வு, ஊகம், கணிப்பு. See Conjecture meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is conjecture?
Conjecture can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce conjecture?
Conjecture is pronounced /kənˈd͡ʒɛkt͡ʃə/ (UK).
What is the plural of conjecture?
The plural of conjecture is conjectures.

Words near conjecture in the dictionary

  1. conjecturalists
  2. conjecturalities
  3. conjecturality
  4. conjecturally
  5. conjecturals
  6. conjecture
  7. conjectured
  8. conjecturer
  9. conjecturers
  10. conjectures
  11. conjectureth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: conjecture (page history and authors); conjecture (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); अट्टाहास (Marathi) (page history and authors); اٹکل (Urdu) (page history and authors); conjecture (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); conjecture (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); conjecture (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “conjecture.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/conjecture. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.