estimate

«estimate» in Mova's school dictionary: to make a careful guess about an amount, size, cost or… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

verb (estimate, estimates, estimated, estimating); noun (an estimate, estimates)

meaning for a pupil

1) To estimate is to make a careful guess about an amount, size, cost or time, without counting or measuring exactly. tree →

2) An estimate is the number or answer you get by estimating. tree →

sense in the lessons

In school maths pupils estimate before calculating, by rounding, to check whether an answer is sensible; in science they estimate lengths and numbers; in everyday life people estimate time, cost and distance. Phrases: «estimate the answer», «a rough estimate», «a good estimate», «estimate by rounding».

examples

• Estimate how many sweets are in the jar. tree →
• 49 + 52 is about 100, so that is a good estimate. tree →
• My estimate was 30, and the real number was 28. tree →
• Builders give an estimate of the cost before they start. tree →
• Estimate the length of the table, then measure it. tree →
• We estimated the trip would take an hour. tree →
• A rough estimate is fine; you don't need the exact number. tree →
• The builder and carpenter made an estimate that the new house would cost ten hundred and twenty dollars to build. tree →

note

The verb ends in «-mate» (rhymes with «gate»); the noun ends in «-mit». An estimate is not a wild guess: it uses known facts and rounding. In maths, an estimate is close to the true answer but not exact; use it to check your working.

In the corpora

• Argentinosaurus may have weighed 70 tonnes or more and been about 35 metres long; these sizes are estimates from a few huge bones.
• To estimate a total, you round each price and add them in your head.
• To estimate a total, round each price and add the rounded numbers in your head.
• The Earth is about 40,000 km around the equator, and the Greek scholar Eratosthenes estimated this size quite well around 240 BC.
• Real numbers are only estimates, so historians give ranges, not exact counts like a game screen.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «estimate» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.