Library / English Dictionary

INFER

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

Irregular inflected forms: inferred    , inferring   

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Believe to be the case

Example:

I understand you have no previous experience?

Synonyms:

infer; understand

Classified under:

Verbs of thinking, judging, analyzing, doubting

Hypernyms (to "infer" is one way to...):

believe (accept as true; take to be true)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s that CLAUSE

Sentence example:

They infer that there was a traffic accident

Sense 2

Meaning:

Guess correctly; solve by guessing

Example:

He guessed the right number of beans in the jar and won the prize

Synonyms:

guess; infer

Classified under:

Verbs of thinking, judging, analyzing, doubting

Hypernyms (to "infer" is one way to...):

figure out; lick; puzzle out; solve; work; work out (find the solution to (a problem or question) or understand the meaning of)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "infer"):

tell (discern or comprehend)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s that CLAUSE

Sense 3

Meaning:

Reason by deduction; establish by deduction

Synonyms:

deduce; deduct; derive; infer

Classified under:

Verbs of thinking, judging, analyzing, doubting

Hypernyms (to "infer" is one way to...):

conclude; reason; reason out (decide by reasoning; draw or come to a conclusion)

Domain category:

logic; logical system; system of logic (a system of reasoning)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "infer"):

extrapolate (gain knowledge of (an area not known or experienced) by extrapolating)

surmise (infer from incomplete evidence)

elicit (derive by reason)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s that CLAUSE

Derivation:

inference (the reasoning involved in drawing a conclusion or making a logical judgment on the basis of circumstantial evidence and prior conclusions rather than on the basis of direct observation)

Sense 4

Meaning:

Conclude by reasoning; in logic

Synonyms:

deduce; infer

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Hypernyms (to "infer" is one way to...):

conclude; reason; reason out (decide by reasoning; draw or come to a conclusion)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s that CLAUSE

Derivation:

inference (the reasoning involved in drawing a conclusion or making a logical judgment on the basis of circumstantial evidence and prior conclusions rather than on the basis of direct observation)

Sense 5

Meaning:

Draw from specific cases for more general cases

Synonyms:

extrapolate; generalise; generalize; infer

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Hypernyms (to "infer" is one way to...):

conclude; reason; reason out (decide by reasoning; draw or come to a conclusion)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "infer"):

overgeneralise; overgeneralize (draw too general a conclusion)

universalise; universalize (make universal)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s that CLAUSE

Derivation:

inference (the reasoning involved in drawing a conclusion or making a logical judgment on the basis of circumstantial evidence and prior conclusions rather than on the basis of direct observation)

Credits

 Context examples: 

An abstract or general idea inferred or derived from specific instances.

(Construct, NCI Thesaurus)

It was also inferred that the penitentes would be more common around Europa's equator.

(Icy Warning for Space Missions to Jupiter's Moon, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

Organic compounds have been found in certain meteorites as well as inferred from telescopic observations of several asteroids.

(Dawn Discovers Evidence for Organic Material on Ceres, NASA)

Kepler measurements of starlight infer the spin rate of a star by picking up small changes in its brightness.

(Kepler Watches Stellar Dancers in the Pleiades Cluster, NASA)

Nothing had come of her zealous intervention; nor could I infer, from what he told me, that any clue had been obtained, for a moment, to Emily's fate.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

One of those lines was the detection of tiny rock grains inferred to be the product of hydrothermal chemistry taking place at temperatures of at least 194 degrees Fahrenheit (90 degrees Celsius).

(Powering Saturn's Active Ocean Moon, NASA)

As a result, HA antibody levels have traditionally been used to guide vaccine strain selection and to infer how effective that vaccine might be against circulating viruses until field studies are available.

(Study finds factors that may influence influenza vaccine effectiveness, NIH)

In one supermassive system called BL Lacertae, weighing 200 million times the mass of our Sun, scientists have inferred time delays millions of times greater than what this study found.

(NuSTAR Probes Black Hole Jet Mystery, NASA)

The scientists found that these inferred buried ice deposits are correlated with the locations of already detected surface ice.

(The Moon and Mercury May Have Thick Ice Deposits, NASA)

"This study combines geophysical and geochemical data to infer how porous space is created in the subsurface," said Lina Patino, director of NSF's Division of Earth Sciences.

(Study explores how rock expands near soil surface in Sierra Nevada, National Science Foundation)