speculate
part of speech
verb (speculate, speculates, speculated, speculating)
meaning for a pupil
1) To guess or form ideas about something when you don't have all the facts. tree →
2) (money) To buy things like shares, land or currencies hoping to sell them later for more, with a risk of losing money. tree →
sense in the lessons
In history, science and reading lessons, pupils speculate (make guesses) about why something happened, then look for evidence; teachers say «don't just speculate, check». In news, people speculate about who will win or why something happened. In money lessons, speculating is risky investing.
examples
- Scientists speculate that there might be water on that planet. tree →
- Everyone speculated about who the new teacher would be. tree →
- Don't speculate — read the text and find the answer. tree →
- Newspapers speculated about why the singer quit. tree →
- People who speculate on shares can win or lose a lot of money. tree →
- We can only speculate about how the Stone Age people moved the stones. tree →
- I will be an architect, which will place me among those who possess riches and intellect, and who speculate in art. tree →
note
Regular verb. Noun: speculation; adjective: speculative. Speculation is a guess, not a proven fact; a good answer says «we can only speculate» when there is no evidence.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «speculate» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.