What's the difference between guess and speculate?

Guess


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To form an opinion concerning, without knowledge or means of knowledge; to judge of at random; to conjecture.
  • (v. t.) To judge or form an opinion of, from reasons that seem preponderating, but are not decisive.
  • (v. t.) To solve by a correct conjecture; to conjecture rightly; as, he who guesses the riddle shall have the ring; he has guessed my designs.
  • (v. t.) To hit upon or reproduce by memory.
  • (v. t.) To think; to suppose; to believe; to imagine; -- followed by an objective clause.
  • (v. i.) To make a guess or random judgment; to conjecture; -- with at, about, etc.
  • (n.) An opinion as to anything, formed without sufficient or decisive evidence or grounds; an attempt to hit upon the truth by a random judgment; a conjecture; a surmise.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) What's to become of Tibetan stability and cohesion then is anyone's guess.
  • (2) The Pan American Health Organization, the Americas arm of the World Health Organization, estimated the deaths from Tuesday's magnitude 7 quake at between 50,000 and 100,000, but said that was a "huge guess".
  • (3) I guess that’s my socialist principles,” says the older woman.
  • (4) Iowa (10pm ET) Real Clear Politics average: Obama +2.0pt 2008 result: Obama won by 9.4pt 2004 result: Bush won by 0.7pt Swing counties with 50k+ population: Polk (+5.1), Scott (+5.0), Woodbury (-10.0) This state is where the primary season begins, and it likes to keep Americans guessing.
  • (5) In the end, the emails from citizen scientists nailed the timing: “looks like it started maybe December 2015”; the severity: “I’ve seen dieback before, but not like this”; and the cause: “guessing it may be the consequence of the four-year drought”.
  • (6) The most serious attack is called offline password guessing.
  • (7) And Bristol, I guess, is following on because it has an ambition to become something similar.” According to Key, Bristol’s congestion problems are only as bad as those of other UK cities, and it’s “streets ahead” on walking and cycling .
  • (8) The New Economics Foundation guessed that it could be anywhere between 3.4 and 8.3p ; 8.3 pence was so far beyond what anyone else forecast that I treated it as scarcely credible.
  • (9) As you might have already guessed, I welcome the "rise of house prices".
  • (10) I guess it's all down to Miss Matthews, who taught me English when I was growing up in Dar es Salaam.
  • (11) Robben's penalty was so well placed that it sneaked in despite Casillas's guessing right and almost reaching his own post.
  • (12) We had a meeting of minds, I guess you’d say,” Whillock told the Guardian.
  • (13) No precise estimate was availabletoday, but the Tories on a first guess believe spending outside the protected areas will have to fall by 7% over the two years.
  • (14) David Lengel (@LengelDavid) #Cardinals fans on the road with predictions for G6 #WorldSeries guess who they like tonight?
  • (15) They have already forced government exporters to sell their dollars, and same will happen for banks I guess, so in a sense, capital controls are already in place,” said Sergei Guriev, an exiled economist who fled Russia after criticising the Kremlin.
  • (16) With their news and social media interest, they will be noting everything that follows their murderous assault on Paris, and my guess is that right now the chant among them will be “We are winning”.
  • (17) All these were produced by School 21’s pupils and he invites me to guess the age group; each time, I overestimate by at least two years.
  • (18) Instructing the subjects to guess or not to guess had an effect of intra-array, displacement, and extra-array errors.
  • (19) But on the strength of the effort expended on the right royal cover-up thus far, it seems a fair guess that officials and ministers will have given the prince’s letters rather more favourable attention than routine correspondence with a member of the public.
  • (20) Wang admitted basing his report “on hearsay and his own subjective guesses without conducting due verifications”, Xinhua added.

Speculate


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To consider by turning a subject in the mind, and viewing it in its different aspects and relations; to meditate; to contemplate; to theorize; as, to speculate on questions in religion; to speculate on political events.
  • (v. i.) To view subjects from certain premises given or assumed, and infer conclusions respecting them a priori.
  • (v. i.) To purchase with the expectation of a contingent advance in value, and a consequent sale at a profit; -- often, in a somewhat depreciative sense, of unsound or hazardous transactions; as, to speculate in coffee, in sugar, or in bank stock.
  • (v. t.) To consider attentively; as, to speculate the nature of a thing.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It did the job of triggering growth, but it also fueled real-estate speculation, similar to what was going on in the mid-2000s here.” Slowing economic growth may be another concern.
  • (2) It has been speculated that these cigarette smoke-induced alterations contribute to the depressed pulmonary defense mechanisms commonly demonstrated in smokers.
  • (3) We speculate that this cleavage event is catalyzed by either a cryptic potyviral proteinase that requires a host factor or subcellular environment for activation, or possibly a host proteinase.
  • (4) 9.23pm GMT Expect the reporters to get even more speculative and desperate from hereon in.
  • (5) So it was speculated that the enhancement of pulmonary metastasis needs remaining of irradiated tumor in bodies of mice for a certain period.
  • (6) We speculate that intestinal injury may also induce or perpetuate arthritis by systemic distribution of inflammatory mediators produced by intestinal immune effector cells.
  • (7) We speculate that the preferential rupture of the H2B-H4 contact is of physiological significance.
  • (8) Such an explanation not only remains vague and speculative but deserves criticism also for being incomplete.
  • (9) One may speculate whether clinical conditions exist--apart from hereditary retinal dystrophies--in which the retina becomes more sensitive to light from strong artificial or natural sources, which are otherwise innoxious.
  • (10) The literature concerning the possible effects of tetracyclines on hemostasis with or without antecedent anticoagulation therapy is reviewed and the speculated mechanisms for such an interaction are discussed.
  • (11) Cable, once a leading critic of City speculation, insists the shares will go to responsible investors.
  • (12) "Getting a 95% loan to value mortgage lets you speculate on the expected house price increases a lot more than a 75% mortgage," he said.
  • (13) Thus one may speculate that endothelin plays a role in the coronary spasm which has been shown in patients with angina pectoris.
  • (14) Gerson Zweifach, general counsel for both News Corp and 21st Century Fox , Murdoch’s film and TV business, said: “We are grateful that this matter has been concluded and acknowledge the fairness and professionalism of the Department of Justice throughout this investigation.” It is understood there has been no background settlement with the Department of Justice in order to avoid a full-blown investigation, contrary to speculation in New York over a year ago that the company was looking at a possible payment of over $850m.
  • (15) Dealers speculated that Facebook's army of bankers had stepped in to stop the shares falling below $38, a move that would have landed the social network with a public relations disaster on its first day as a public company.
  • (16) If we were to have a plebiscite before the end of the year, and you were to reverse-engineer that, it would make interesting speculation about the timing of an election.” Abetz said in January he would need to see whether a plebiscite was “above board or whether the question is stacked” before deciding to heed any result in favour of marriage equality.
  • (17) Undoubtedly because new theories remain speculative when viewed from our own standpoint.
  • (18) Lack of transparency about the nature of the relationship between police and media also led to speculation and perceptions, whatever the facts, that caused "serious harm".
  • (19) The similarity of the low-K breathing pattern to that observed with reserpine administration together with the known relationships of K and catecholamine metabolism lead to the speculation that K depletion alters breathing via an effect on central catecholamine metabolism.
  • (20) Last week, Park offered a public apology after acknowledging Choi had edited some of her speeches and provided help with public relations, but South Korea’s media have speculated Choi played a much larger, secret role in government affairs.