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# surmise

«surmise» in Mova's school dictionary: **to guess something from clues, without being sure** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples.

### part of speech

verb (surmise, surmises, surmised, surmising); noun (a surmise)

### meaning for a pupil

1) To surmise is to guess something from clues, without being sure. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/surmise/#m1)

2) A surmise is a guess of this kind. (formal, old use) [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/surmise/#m2)

### sense in the lessons

in stories someone works out a likely answer from what they can see; the word is more formal than «guess»

### examples

- I can only surmise why the door was locked. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/surmise/#x1)
- I surmise that the stranger is lost. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/surmise/#x2)
- Her surmise turned out to be right. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/surmise/#x3)
- It was no more than a surmise. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/surmise/#x4)

### note

nothing for maths

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «surmise» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/surmise/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.