infer
pronunciation
How to pronounce infer in British English:
UK [ɪnˈfɜː(r)]
How to pronounce infer in American English:
US [ɪnˈfɜːr]
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- Verb:
- reason by deduction; establish by deduction
- draw from specific cases for more general cases
- conclude by reasoning; in logic
- guess correctly; solve by guessing
- believe to be the case
Word Origin
- infer (v.)
- 1520s, from Latin inferre "bring into, carry in; deduce, infer, conclude, draw an inference; bring against," from in- "in" (see in- (2)) + ferre "carry, bear," from PIE *bher- (1) "to bear, to carry, to take" (cognates: Sanskrit bharati "carries;" Avestan baraiti "carries;" Old Persian barantiy "they carry;" Armenian berem "I carry;" Greek pherein "to carry;" Old Irish beru/berim "I catch, I bring forth;" Gothic bairan "to carry;" Old English and Old High German beran, Old Norse bera "barrow;" Old Church Slavonic birati "to take;" Russian brat' "to take," bremya "a burden"). Sense of "draw a conclusion" is first attested 1520s.
Example
- 1. But you cannot infer cause and effect from an accident of timing .
- 2. No longer are we constrained simply to infer mental functions from observable behavior .
- 3. By tracking tick-by-tick prices we can infer how market participants build and close positions .
- 4. We can therefore infer that the underlying rocks were tilted and eroded before the younger rocks were deposited .
- 5. Palaeoecologists can usually only infer the richness of an ancient forest ecosystem by piecing together fossils of plant fragments of varying ages .