What's the difference between guess and wonder?

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.

Wonder


Definition:

  • (n.) That emotion which is excited by novelty, or the presentation to the sight or mind of something new, unusual, strange, great, extraordinary, or not well understood; surprise; astonishment; admiration; amazement.
  • (n.) A cause of wonder; that which excites surprise; a strange thing; a prodigy; a miracle.
  • (v. i.) To be affected with surprise or admiration; to be struck with astonishment; to be amazed; to marvel.
  • (v. i.) To feel doubt and curiosity; to wait with uncertain expectation; to query in the mind; as, he wondered why they came.
  • (a.) Wonderful.
  • (adv.) Wonderfully.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The information about her father's semi-brainwashing forms an interesting backdrop to Malala's comments when I ask if she ever wonders about the man who tried to kill her on her way back from school that day in October last year, and why his hands were shaking as he held the gun – a detail she has picked up from the girls in the school bus with her at the time; she herself has no memory of the shooting.
  • (2) He said: "This is a wonderful town but Tesco will suck the life out of the greengrocers, butchers, off-licence, and then it is only a matter of time for us too.
  • (3) All 17 candidates are going to be participating in debate night and I think that’s a wonderful opportunity Reince Priebus Republican party officials have defended the decision to limit participation, pointing out that the chasing pack will get a chance to debate separately before the main event.
  • (4) But in the rush to design it, Girardet wonders if the finer details of waste disposal and green power were lost.
  • (5) Two years ago I met a wonderful man and we now feel it’s time to tie the knot.
  • (6) No evidence has been produced that she was personally involved in the bribery, but some are wondering whether the Petrobras scandal might turn into a Watergate for her.
  • (7) But she has struggled – quite awkwardly – to articulate her evolution on same-sex marriage, and has left environmental activists wondering what her exact energy policy is.
  • (8) With grievous amazement, never self-pitying but sometimes bordering on a sort of numbed wonderment, Levi records the day-to-day personal and social history of the camp, noting not only the fine gradations of his own descent, but the capacity of some prisoners to cut a deal and strike a bargain, while others, destined by their age or character for the gas ovens, follow "the slope down to the bottom, like streams that run down to the sea".
  • (9) Would it best best to risk a Great Reform Bill (shades of 1832) - or would piecemeal reform be best, some wonder?
  • (10) He added: “From what we’ve seen so far, Londoners can be forgiven for wondering if Zac will be a mayor who works to bring London’s diverse communities together or one who will drive them apart.” Others evince real surprise over Goldsmith’s stance.
  • (11) Given this bipartisan strategy to minimise commitments, there is little wonder that voter turnout also reached a historical low, with less than two thirds bothering to vote in the east.
  • (12) As he sits in Athens wondering when the International Monetary Fund is going to deliver another bailout, George Papandreou might be tempted to hum a few lines of Tired of Waiting for You.
  • (13) KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVE "Having watched 42-year-old Kevin Poole turn out for Derby recently, I wondered 'have any grandfathers ever played league football?'
  • (14) "My wonderful, brave and adored father, Jack Ashley, Lord Ashley of Stoke, has died after a short battle with pneumonia."
  • (15) Had not Jaggers summoned me to see him on the day of my majority some years later, I might have wondered at the psychological implausibility of an old woman training a child to be a psychopath, but luckily I was so caught up by the possibility of my benefactor's name being revealed that the thought quite slipped my mind.
  • (16) I believe you are aware of the meeting – and so wondered if 3pm or later on Thursday works for you?
  • (17) Facebook Twitter Pinterest May dismisses reports of frosty dinner with EU chief as ‘Brussels gossip’ The EU delegation are said to have wondered whether Davis might still be in his post following the general election.
  • (18) One of the punters came up to me after and said that I seemed confident, but he’d spent the whole time wondering when I was going to tell a joke.
  • (19) In north Wales, Llandudno town council has had to cancel its annual display at short notice after it was told it would have to pay at least £22,000 to insure the wonderful Victorian pier in case of a fire.
  • (20) No wonder public discussion of this most unexpected scientific development has so far been muted and respectful, waiting for the expert community that discovered the anomaly by accident – the Opera experiment at Gran Sasso was devised to isolate different varieties of neutrino, not to test Einstein – to work out what it all means, or doesn't.