SPECULATES Synonyms: 34 Similar and Opposite Words

speculates

verb

present tense third-person singular of speculate

as in assumes

to form an opinion from little or no evidence I speculate that someone has been using this cabin as a trysting place

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Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Recent Examples of speculates Her exit comes as the industry speculates wildly about the fate of other division leaders across both companies. — Matt Donnelly, Variety, 29 Sep. 2026 The Instagram caption speculates the albino shark was somewhere between eight and nine feet long. — David Hookstead Outkick, FOXNews.com, 23 Sep. 2026 The report’s conclusion speculates that keeping things private, even innocuous ones, signals secretiveness. — Neil J. Rubenking, PC Magazine, 10 Sep. 2026 Neiman speculates that polyploidy and the snail’s unusual reproductive strategies are related. — Carrie Arnold contributing, Quanta Magazine, 2 Sep. 2026 Berman speculates that Meta will next settle the school districts case, which stemmed from some 1,200 districts across the country accusing the Facebook parent and other social media companies of spreading intentionally addictive features. — Jonathan Vanian, CNBC, 30 Aug. 2026 The source speculates that Meghan may keep a relatively low profile as the family settles back into life in Britain. — Simon Perry, PEOPLE, 20 Aug. 2026 At the same time, Caillier speculates that the rugs are strong enough to stand on their own. — Audrey Lee, Architectural Digest, 11 Aug. 2026 Interestingly, sales of sunflower butter go up 18%; Instacart speculates that this happens because most schools have a nut-free policy. — Parents, 7 Aug. 2026

Recent Examples of Synonyms for speculates

Verb

The narrator assumes his gift for retail politics will charm his old friend; Micah laughs in his face.

— Ryan Chapman, Literary Hub, 30 Sep. 2026
Hardly anyone assumes that exact values for pc can be determined.

— Manon Bischoff, Scientific American, 30 Sep. 2026

Definition of assumes

Verb

Logan Wright, the author of Broken China, guesses that growth is now running at no more than 1% — and may even be zero.

— Andy Browne, semafor.com, 11 Aug. 2026
The system consists of a predictive algorithm that guesses how a robot is broken, along with robotic manipulators that actually take the broken robot apart.

— Kohava Mendelsohn, IEEE Spectrum, 10 Aug. 2026

Definition of guesses

Verb

Rock* supposes there’s a fork in the road where the Beatles take us one way and the Velvet Underground pull us somewhere else entirely.

— Craig Jenkins, Vulture, 22 Sep. 2026
Book banning supposes that children never age, never leave home, never become their own people outside their parents.

— Rebecca Stafford, PEOPLE, 1 Sep. 2026

Definition of supposes

Verb

Knowing someone's baseline characteristics is not the same as knowing what that person thinks about this decision today.

— Leslie John, CNBC, 6 Oct. 2026
What to read next For Mars, the team thinks that this balance was reversed, with roughly three-quarters of its mass appearing to come from planetesimals, and the remaining quarter from pebble accretion.

— Sharmila Kuthunur, Space.com, 6 Oct. 2026

Definition of thinks

Verb

Homeownership has long been a marker of the American Dream, but this dream presumes autonomy, voice and equitable treatment.

— Stephanie A. Dhuman, The Conversation, 30 Sep. 2026
But that logic presumes every single aspect of both studios’ production pipelines will continue to operate normally once Paramount and WBD become one.

— Charles Pulliam-Moore, The Verge, 22 Sep. 2026

Definition of presumes

Verb

Swift appears as a spectral figure trying to warn Johnson that, based on her own experience, her rich husband has more sinister intentions than his current bride imagines.

— Chris Willman, Variety, 4 Oct. 2026
Our work re-imagines these ancient tombs as theatrical spaces, built to perpetuate a form of metaphysical human experience.

— Jacqueline Ortoleva, Scientific American, 3 Oct. 2026

Definition of imagines

Verb

Many Spaniards lived or even committed atrocities in the Civil War, suffering a collective guilt, Ruiz Capillas surmises.

— John Hopewell, Variety, 12 Aug. 2026
Evans surmises the fish that survived were in an area of the creek where less charred material and sediment were swept in.

— Lila Seidman, Los Angeles Times, 9 June 2026

Definition of surmises

Verb

Balasubramanian suspects that even this kind of radical model doesn’t go far enough.

— Quanta Magazine, Quanta Magazine, 25 Sep. 2026
British Columbia suspects that OpenAI actually wanted to avoid drawing a hard line that would require OpenAI to report more violent users to the police and expose the public to more of the real-world threats that chatbots could pose.

— Ashley Belanger, ArsTechnica, 22 Sep. 2026

Definition of suspects

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“Speculates.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/speculates. Accessed 8 Oct. 2026.

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