How to Use surmise in a Sentence

surmise

1 of 2 noun
  • The reason bird genomes are small and streamlined, some experts surmise, has to do with flight.
    Kate Wong, Scientific American, 1 Nov. 2019
  • Fans of the original film love to pry into its every nook, with a wild surmise as to Kubrick’s intentions.
    Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 8 Nov. 2019
  • From his surmise prov'd false, find peace within, *Favor from Heav'n, our witness from th’ event.
    Meilan Solly, Smithsonian, 19 Sep. 2019
  • The wild surmise of his design sketches beguiled virtually all who saw them.
    Bill Wyman, New York Times, 6 Mar. 2020
  • When the police and the municipal president — whose 2008 election, many surmise, was bought by the cartels — came with more armed men to release the hostages, the women drove them out too, along with the old political order.
    Michael Snyder, Los Angeles Times, 7 Oct. 2019
  • Stoet and Geary surmise that women in these countries may be choosing careers with the strongest path to financial independence.
    chicagotribune.com, 19 Apr. 2018
  • His surmise that official Washington is less enamored of his border wall than are the participants at his campaign rallies is correct.
    James Freeman, WSJ, 29 Jan. 2020
  • Though there’s no micro-level evidence on savings rates to check this against, cautions Schmelzing, this surmise is consistent with narrative accounts and research on longer-term wealth evolution.
    Gwynn Guilford, Quartz, 19 Jan. 2020
  • Entertaining those that remained into Monday morning, of course, with enough crazy choreography to make any festival-goer surmise that those hand-out sandwiches may well have been dosed.
    Gary Graff, Billboard, 14 Aug. 2019
  • Judging by the immediate response of the partisan Tory press this weekend, Johnson is correct in his surmise that what goes on in his personal life remains between him, his girlfriend, and possibly his divorce lawyer.
    Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker, 23 June 2019
  • My surmise is that the statement is not logical but political: its officials harbor the fear that the Holocaust will become little more than a polemical weapon in ideological contests between left and right.
    Peter E. Gordon, The New York Review of Books, 7 Jan. 2020
  • This attitudinal change was anticipated centuries earlier by Aristotle’s surmise that the curved shadow of a lunar eclipse is that of a spherical Earth.
    Alan Hirshfeld, WSJ, 11 Aug. 2017
  • Privileged, comfortable people became convinced that this presidency would directly make their lives worse, and this surmise upset them tremendously.
    Nathaniel Friedman, The New Republic, 21 Oct. 2019
  • To make sense of a correspondence, however complete or incomplete, is to constellate fragmentary evidence, and make surmises about what is missing (including what may not have been apparent to the letter-writers themselves).
    Langdon Hammer, The New York Review of Books, 25 Feb. 2020
  • His discovery, according to numerous historians who have written books about Nixon and conducted extensive research of his papers, finally provides validation of what had largely been surmise.
    Peter Baker, Orange County Register, 3 Jan. 2017
  • Ideas formed based on uneducated surmises, particularly those by people with poor knowledge of Islam, can backfire horribly.
    Kurt Eichenwald, Newsweek, 27 Feb. 2017
  • The reason bird genomes are small and streamlined, some experts surmise, has to do with flight.
    Kate Wong, Scientific American, 1 Nov. 2019
  • Fans of the original film love to pry into its every nook, with a wild surmise as to Kubrick’s intentions.
    Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 8 Nov. 2019
  • From his surmise prov'd false, find peace within, *Favor from Heav'n, our witness from th’ event.
    Meilan Solly, Smithsonian, 19 Sep. 2019
  • The wild surmise of his design sketches beguiled virtually all who saw them.
    Bill Wyman, New York Times, 6 Mar. 2020
  • When the police and the municipal president — whose 2008 election, many surmise, was bought by the cartels — came with more armed men to release the hostages, the women drove them out too, along with the old political order.
    Michael Snyder, Los Angeles Times, 7 Oct. 2019
  • Stoet and Geary surmise that women in these countries may be choosing careers with the strongest path to financial independence.
    chicagotribune.com, 19 Apr. 2018
  • His surmise that official Washington is less enamored of his border wall than are the participants at his campaign rallies is correct.
    James Freeman, WSJ, 29 Jan. 2020
  • Though there’s no micro-level evidence on savings rates to check this against, cautions Schmelzing, this surmise is consistent with narrative accounts and research on longer-term wealth evolution.
    Gwynn Guilford, Quartz, 19 Jan. 2020
  • Entertaining those that remained into Monday morning, of course, with enough crazy choreography to make any festival-goer surmise that those hand-out sandwiches may well have been dosed.
    Gary Graff, Billboard, 14 Aug. 2019
  • Judging by the immediate response of the partisan Tory press this weekend, Johnson is correct in his surmise that what goes on in his personal life remains between him, his girlfriend, and possibly his divorce lawyer.
    Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker, 23 June 2019
  • My surmise is that the statement is not logical but political: its officials harbor the fear that the Holocaust will become little more than a polemical weapon in ideological contests between left and right.
    Peter E. Gordon, The New York Review of Books, 7 Jan. 2020
  • This attitudinal change was anticipated centuries earlier by Aristotle’s surmise that the curved shadow of a lunar eclipse is that of a spherical Earth.
    Alan Hirshfeld, WSJ, 11 Aug. 2017
  • Privileged, comfortable people became convinced that this presidency would directly make their lives worse, and this surmise upset them tremendously.
    Nathaniel Friedman, The New Republic, 21 Oct. 2019
  • To make sense of a correspondence, however complete or incomplete, is to constellate fragmentary evidence, and make surmises about what is missing (including what may not have been apparent to the letter-writers themselves).
    Langdon Hammer, The New York Review of Books, 25 Feb. 2020
Advertisement

surmise

2 of 2 verb
  • We can only surmise what happened.
  • He must have surmised that I was not interested.
  • Some surmised that the killers had come from Sidi Chamarouche.
    Rachel Monroe, Outside Online, 29 July 2019
  • The scientists surmise that the size of the etchings mattered.
    Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, Discover Magazine, 15 June 2022
  • Owen surmised that Labyrinthodon could have made the tracks of Chirotherium.
    Hans-Dieter Sues, Smithsonian, 11 Sep. 2019
  • This was the first time the pop singer performed the song, which many have surmised to be about her ex-husband, Liam Hemsworth.
    Chelsey Sanchez, Harper's BAZAAR, 27 Aug. 2019
  • Cole’s team surmised that the athletic theme was behind the shift.
    Naomi Nix, Washington Post, 9 July 2023
  • The audience is left to surmise Calum’s fate for themselves.
    Seth Abramovitch, The Hollywood Reporter, 22 Feb. 2023
  • James, some have surmised, wants to play for coach Gregg Popovich before his legendary run is up.
    Jeff Zillgitt, USA TODAY, 8 Mar. 2018
  • It might be surmised that the mayor and the city have plenty of more important things to be working on.
    Vahe Gregorian, kansascity, 13 June 2018
  • Reddit users surmise that maybe Cheryl was held back a few grades, or Jason skipped some.
    Carolyn Twersky, Seventeen, 3 May 2019
  • Fans surmised that the track is about Swift’s split from Joe Alwyn, her partner of six years; their breakup made headlines in April.
    Anna Chan, Billboard, 29 Nov. 2023
  • Reporters there surmised that the bear had been around people before.
    Natalie Dreier, ajc, 3 July 2018
  • At best, Kudlow seems to be surmising that the deficit may decline as a percentage of GDP (the first chart above) due to growth.
    Aaron Blake, Washington Post, 29 June 2018
  • But it is widely surmised that the Kikuyu old guard would stop at nothing to keep Mr Odinga out of power.
    The Economist, 20 July 2017
  • That much can be surmised from people tweeting with shock from the baking aisles of their grocery stores.
    Chase Purdy, Quartz, 25 Mar. 2020
  • But easy to surmise that any obstruction case was just made that much harder.
    Michael Smerconish, Philly.com, 20 June 2018
  • Keltner surmises that an engineer might have made a copy of the session and passed it around.
    David Gambacorta, Longreads, 25 June 2019
  • Bouzaid surmised that the valet didn’t realize how powerful a Porsche can be.
    Natalie Dreier, ajc, 31 May 2018
  • Hoggard surmises that the bottles were meant to act as decoys.
    Geoff Manaugh, The New Yorker, 31 Oct. 2019
  • So a new theory emerged: experts surmised that fish small enough to eat copepods, like those caught in Tarangara’s pond, were to blame.
    New York Times, 18 June 2018
  • The potential remains special, but Stephenson is still not quite there yet, the Reds have surmised.
    Gentry Estes, The Courier-Journal, 16 May 2018
  • The simple act of tweeting red heart emoji led fans to surmise that her re-release of Red would be her next album.
    Ashley Lutz, Fortune, 8 Oct. 2022
  • The internet had already surmised as much this summer, when they were spotted in Cannes, then Paris, and then Tokyo.
    Elise Taylor, Vogue, 9 Oct. 2018
  • When that injury became infected, the disease spread to the roots and bones, the paper surmises.
    Matt Hrodey, Discover Magazine, 22 June 2023
  • The world is waiting to see a big rock on Kylie's finger, but David surmises that Travis may not be ready for that commitment just yet.
    Carolyn Twersky, Seventeen, 22 May 2019
  • Though some would surmise the road back from a second Tommy John signals trouble, Clevinger said it’s the other way around in his case.
    Bryce Miller Columnist, San Diego Union-Tribune, 12 Nov. 2021
  • The fitting itself may also be to blame, Caister surmised.
    Sara Cardine, La Cañada Valley Sun, 30 May 2017
  • Some of this sleep-time brain activity, researchers surmised, might serve memory.
    Ingrid Wickelgren, Scientific American, 20 Feb. 2024
  • Given Claremont’s tightknit community, Skelly surmises Lenz and Sheets knew each other.
    Jessica Ritz, Los Angeles Times, 27 Feb. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'surmise.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: