speculator

/ˈspɛkjʊˌleɪtə/

speculator noun: one who speculates; an observer; a contemplator.

Noun

speculator (plural speculators)

One who speculates; an observer; a contemplator.
- a bold and paradoxical speculatorc. 1683 (date written), Thomas Brown [i.e., Thomas Browne], “(please specify the page)”, in [Thomas Tenison], editor, Certain Miscellany Tracts, London: […] Charles Mearn, […], published 1683, →OCLC
One who forms theories; a theorist.
- […] in things of Fact, the People are as much to be believed, as the most subtle Philosophers and Speculators, since here sense is the Judge.1666, Joseph Glanvill, Philosophical Considerations concerning Witches and Witchcraft
- For, in the earlier part of the seventeenth century, a speculator who had dared to affirm that the human soul is by its nature mortal, and does, in the great majority of cases, actually die with the body, would have been burned alive in Smithfield.1848, Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second
One who speculates; as in investing, one who is willing to take volatile risks upon invested principal for the potential of substantial returns.
- He had inherited his not inconsiderable fortune from an American cousin, who had in his time been a successful speculator—a speculator not exactly in crops, which are notoriously kittle-cattle, but in official crop reports.1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries
- But it would be very unjust to think of all the Railway Members as speculators and simply out to feather their own nests, not that it is fair to think of George Hudson in this light alone.1960 March, N. Caplan, “The Railway Member of Parliament”, in Railway Magazine, page 207
Synonym of field goal.

Synonyms:

field goal

Proper noun capitalized: Speculator

Speculator

A village in the town of Lake Pleasant, Hamilton County, New York, United States.

speculator meaning in Hindi, Bengali, Arabic and Indonesian

speculator in Arabic

one who speculates; as in investing: مُضَارِب muḍārib

speculator in Indonesian

one who speculates; as in investing: spekulan, spekulator

Examples of speculator in a sentence

Mrs Watanabe, the market’s metaphor for Japan’s housewife yen speculators, has come back to life.
To a speculator, a front month future is attractive.
Confirmors buy and sell a property before a transaction is completed and they are generally thought to be speculators.

All 11 example sentences with speculator

Synonyms of speculator

field goal

Forms of speculator

plural	speculators

Origin of speculator

From Latin speculātor (“spy, explorer, investigator”), from speculor (“to watch, to observe”) + -tor (“-er: forming agent nouns”), from specula (“watchtower”), from speciō (“to watch, to observe”), q.v. In some senses, an agent noun formed within English from speculate. Doublet of spectator.

Words formed from speculator

specullector

Questions about speculator

What does speculator mean?: Speculator means one who speculates; an observer; a contemplator.
What is speculator in Hindi?: Speculator in Hindi is सट्टेबाज़ (saṭṭebāz). See Speculator meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is speculator?: Speculator can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce speculator?: Speculator is pronounced /ˈspɛkjʊˌleɪtə/ (UK).
What is the plural of speculator?: The plural of speculator is speculators.

Words near speculator in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: speculator (page history and authors); Speculator (page history and authors); सट्टेबाज़ (Hindi) (page history and authors); speculator (Bengali 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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-speculator.wav.

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