surmise
pronunciation
How to pronounce surmise in British English:
UK [səˈmaɪz , ˈsɜːmaɪz]
How to pronounce surmise in American English:
US [sərˈmaɪz , ˈsɜːrmaɪz]
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- Noun:
- a message expressing an opinion based on incomplete evidence
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- Verb:
- infer from incomplete evidence
- imagine to be the case or true or probable
Word Origin
- surmise (v.)
- c. 1400, in law, "to charge, allege," from Old French surmis, past participle of surmettre "to accuse," from sur- "upon" (see sur- (1)) + mettre "put," from Latin mittere "to send" (see mission). Meaning "to infer conjecturally" is recorded from 1700, from the noun. Related: Surmised; surmising.
- surmise (n.)
- early 15c., legal, "a charge, a formal accusation," from Old French surmise "accusation," noun use of past participle of surmettre (see surmise (v.)). Meaning "inference, guess" is first found in English 1580s. Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacificâand all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmiseâ Silent, upon a peak in Darien. [Keats]
Example
- 1. The police surmise a link between counterfeiting and drug trafficking .
- 2. They surmise that it may be because a high-protein diet causes the brain to receive lower levels of appetite-stimulating hormones .
- 3. As you surmise , the costs of the junk-food strategy are mostly long-term : the children become fat , their teeth rot and they refuse to eat more wholesome fare .
- 4. One way of reading the chart is to surmise that diminishing returns have set in , that every extra yen spent on r & d goes to employ less talented researchers , who study less promising approaches to the same problems .
- 5. If they could measure phosphorus , a key nutrient in biological systems known to support the growth of microbes and algae , lyons and planavsky could surmise the total nutrient concentration .