guess

verb

\ ˈges

guessed; guessing; guesses

Definition of guess

(Entry 1 of 2)

transitive verb

1 : to form an opinion of from little or no evidence She could only guess what he meant.

2 : believe, suppose I guess you're right

3 : to arrive at a correct conclusion about by conjecture, chance, or intuition guess the answer

intransitive verb

: to make a guess We can only guess at what really happened.

guess

noun

Definition of guess (Entry 2 of 2)

: conjecture, surmise I don't know how old you are, but I'll venture a guess.

Other Words from guess Synonyms More Example Sentences Learn More about guess

Keep scrolling for more

Examples of guess in a Sentence

Verb

Can you guess how many people were there? He guessed that it would rain today. It was colder and windier than I had guessed it would be. She can only guess what he meant. I had to choose one, and I guessed right. If you can't think of an answer, guess. “I just heard why he left her.” “Let me guess—another woman.” As you might have guessed, her parents are not happy about her decision. We can only guess at what really happened. She guessed my age on her first try.

Noun

I'm not sure how old he is, but I'm willing to hazard a guess. My guess is that he'll change his story when he realizes how much trouble he's in.

Recent Examples on the Web: Verb

Unlike the company’s first game, which has players answer 10 multiple-choice questions to win a share of the prize money, HQ Words tasks them with guessing popular phrases one letter at a time. — Jon Porter, The Verge, "HQ Trivia becomes HQ Trivia & Words as second game exits beta," 24 Dec. 2018 Rihanna has kept fans of her Fenty Beauty line guessing this year. — Lauren Rearick, Teen Vogue, "Rihanna's Fenty Beauty Is Releasing 10 New Shades of Mattemoiselle Plush Matte Lipstick," 24 Dec. 2018 While some have guessed that Meghan may be returning to social media (Princess Eugenie, Princess Beatrice and Prince Andrew all have personal Instagram accounts), royal reporter Omid Scobie has other ideas. — Lucy Wood, Marie Claire, "Meghan Markle's Instagram Page was Just Reactivated Months After She Deleted it," 18 Dec. 2018 The clip ends with Theresa correctly guessing how their loved one passed away. — Kayla Keegan, Good Housekeeping, "'Long Island Medium' Theresa Caputo Makes Mom and Daughter Hysterical With Reading," 16 Nov. 2018 Ariana has been gearing up to release a video for her new single, and many fans have guessed could be themed around early-2000s rom-coms. — Avery Matera, Teen Vogue, "Ariana Grande Replaced Her Engagement Ring From Pete Davidson in a Very “Thank U, Next” Way," 21 Nov. 2018 So there was a lot of guessing from afar and tuning on-site. — James Vincent, The Verge, "Teaching robots body language offers common ground for humans and machines," 11 Nov. 2018 Decades of misleading map projections might trick many Americans into guessing Maine, but the answer is actually one tiny town in Minnesota. — Ken Jennings, Condé Nast Traveler, "This Tiny Minnesota Town Is Completely Surrounded by Canada," 5 Nov. 2018 Employee Mike Storms did the detective work, guessing it was original given small keyholes at the inside edge of the pages that suggest they had once been bound by string. — Maryclaire Dale, The Seattle Times, "Goodwill workers in NJ find original 1774 ‘rebel’ newspaper," 26 Oct. 2018

Recent Examples on the Web: Noun

Admittedly, this one's an impossible feat, but that doesn't make his guesses any less amusing. — Andrea Park, Allure, "We Challenged Noah Centineo to Try Our Favorite Beauty Treatments and the Results Are Amazing," 21 Sep. 2018 Estimates of a potential city payout have been as high as $100 million, but the people making such guesses have always acknowledged uncertainty given a host of variables. — David Garrick, sandiegouniontribune.com, "If state Supreme Court rules against San Diego on pensions, it could could cost city millions," 14 July 2018 Eleven years later, a Corps of Topographical Engineers map had sought to add additional detail, but could only insert a tenuous dotted line that indicated some cartographer’s wild guess about the Colorado River’s course. — Johnforristerross, Longreads, "Taming the Great American Desert," 2 July 2018 Here are our best plausible guesses as to why Casual Monday Minnette was late. 1. — refinery29.com, "Why Did 13RW's Clay Jensen Walk The Red Carpet Alone In A T-Shirt?," 19 June 2018 Our guess is that a MEMS oscillator used to generate a clock signal for the phones is misbehaving after exposure to helium, hence the system-wide failure. — Peter Bright, Ars Technica, "Helium implicated in weird iPhone malfunctions," 31 Oct. 2018 And my guess is, when the puck drops at KeyArena, the only thing hanging over the ice will be empty space the new franchise hopes to fill on its own merit. — Geoff Baker, The Seattle Times, "Reviving ‘Metropolitans’ name for NHL could work, but might want to skip that 1917 Stanley Cup banner," 15 Oct. 2018 My guess is this is to promote the movie since the whole premise is that everyone gets hacked???? — Gianluca Russo, Teen Vogue, "Fans Wonder If Bella Thorne's Instagram Was Hacked," 22 Sep. 2018 Well, my guess is that when there’ll be some profession that’s suddenly disrupted and millions of people are out of their jobs, and then that will wake up the government. — Eric Johnson, Recode, "If they don’t want to lose their jobs to a machine, doctors will need to become compassionate ‘human connectors’," 17 Sep. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'guess.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.