conjecture
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See also: conjecturé
Etymology
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.
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /kənˈd͡ʒɛk.t͡ʃə(ɹ)/
- (General American, Canada) IPA(key): /kənˈd͡ʒɛk.t͡ʃɚ/
Audio (California): (file)
- (General Australian, New Zealand) IPA(key): /kənˈd͡ʒek.t͡ʃə(ɹ)/
Audio (Queensland): (file)
Noun
conjecture (countable and uncountable, plural conjectures)
- (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.
- (formal) A supposition based upon incomplete evidence; a hypothesis.
- The physicist used his conjecture about subatomic particles to design an experiment.
- (mathematics, linguistics) A statement likely to be true based on available evidence, but which has not been formally proven.
- (obsolete) Interpretation of signs and omens.
Synonyms
- See also Thesaurus:supposition
Derived terms
- abc conjecture
- Beal conjecture
- Beal's conjecture
- Brocard's conjecture
- Collatz conjecture
- conjecturingly
- Cramér's conjecture
- Dickson's conjecture
- Dixmier conjecture
- double bubble conjecture
- Elliott-Halberstam conjecture
- Fuglede's conjecture
- Gilbreath's conjecture
- Goldbach's conjecture
- Heawood conjecture
- Hedetniemi's conjecture
- honeycomb conjecture
- Ilieff's conjecture
- Jacobian conjecture
- Keller's conjecture
- Langlands conjecture
- Legendre's conjecture
- Mach's conjecture
- metaconjecture
- Meyniel's conjecture
- misconjecture
- Oesterlé-Masser conjecture
- Poincaré conjecture
- Polignac's conjecture
- Pólya's conjecture
- Ramanujan conjecture
- Ramanujan-Petersson conjecture
- Ryu-Takayanagi conjecture
- Sendov's conjecture
- Singmaster's conjecture
- SYZ conjecture
- Szpiro's conjecture
- Thurston's geometrization conjecture
- twin prime conjecture
- Zarankiewicz's crossing number conjecture
Related terms
Translations
unproven statement; guess
|
supposition based upon incomplete evidence; a hypothesis
|
statement likely to be true based on available evidence, but which has not been formally proven
|
Verb
conjecture (third-person singular simple present conjectures, present participle conjecturing, simple past and past participle conjectured)
- (formal, intransitive) To guess; to venture an unproven idea.
- I do not know if it is true; I am simply conjecturing here.
- 1952 December, 'Mercury', “Modern French Locomotive Performance”, in Railway Magazine, page 804:
- 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.
- (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)
- 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:
- "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.
Derived terms
Translations
to guess
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Further reading
- “conjecture”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
- Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “conjecture”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
- “conjecture”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
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Pronunciation
Etymology 1
Learned borrowing from Latin coniectūra.
Noun
conjecture f (plural conjectures)
- conjecture
- Near-synonyms: hypothèse, supputation
Usage notes
- Not to be confused with conjoncture.
Derived terms
Further reading
- “conjecture”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
Etymology 2
See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.
Verb
conjecture
- inflection of conjecturer:
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Participle
conjectūre
Verb
conjecture
- inflection of conjecturar:
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