Here's something cool and mystical about the otherwise dry, scholarly, snooty-sounding word conjecture: it first meant "gathering omens and signs, or interpreting dreams."

Check out this example from a 1584 book called Discouerie of Witchcraft: "Coniecture vnto me by thy familiar spirit." Oooooh.

Knowing this, you can have a little more fun dismissing something as conjecture: on the surface, you're saying it's merely guesswork, reasoned on shaky argumentative ground, supported by an underwhelming accumulation of evidence... and maybe deep down, you're also saying it's kinda witchy.

The word conjecture breaks down into "con-," meaning "together," and the Latin iacere, meaning "throw." So etymologically, conjecture is stuff that's just thrown together. You saw a black bird cast a shadow on the corn? And you think it means the corn will die? Sure, toss those ideas together. Conjecture.

That Latin iacere, "to throw," which turned into the "ject" in conjecture, sometimes carries a more gentle meaning of "to put, to place, to lie." It gave us all kinds of words that involve literal and figurative throwing or lying, from jut and jet to inject, subject, project, and a_ject ("totally hopeless, as if thrown off or thrown away"), and o_ject__y ("to treat a person or animal like a thing, as if they're something just tossed in front of you").

Can you recall those last two? 

(To reveal any word with blanks, give it a click.)  

"Conjecture" has Latin bits that literally mean "thrown together." Conjectures were originally inferences from signs, omens, or dreams.

Because interpreting those things is a mystical, imaginative process, rather than a reasoned, logical process, "conjecture" grew to mean "a guess, or an opinion or conclusion that's based on not enough evidence."

grammatical bits:

Part of speech:

Noun, both the countable kind ("Those conjectures are ridiculous") and the uncountable kind ("That conjecture is ridiculous").

Other common forms: 

"Conjecture" is also a verb, both the transitive kind ("We don't enough information to conjecture what will happen") and the intransitive kind ("We don't have all the facts, so all we can do is conjecture").

The other verb forms are "conjectured" and "conjecturing."

And the plural noun is "conjectures."

how to use it:

The word "conjecture" is common and formal, often sounding scholarly and serious. When you refer to people's thoughts or guesses as conjectures, your tone could be gentle, suggesting that people are curious and contemplative. But your tone could also be harsh, suggesting that people are making wild or stupid assumptions.

To use the verb, talk about people conjecturing information. For example, we conjecture why something happened, that something is true, how something will happen, or that something happened or will happen.

And you don't have to conjecture something, you can just conjecture: "The TV show Lost was so confusing: were the characters really on an island, or in some kind of afterlife? All we could do was conjecture."

To use the noun, talk about someone's conjecture, or about people proving or disproving a conjecture. Or say that there's been a lot of conjecture around some topic or question, or that some topic or question is a matter of conjecture.

examples:

"[Tiger Woods's] misses are multiplying at an alarming rate. Whether it's the injury or rust is a matter of conjecture."
  — Pete McDaniel, Golf Digest, 10 May 2010

"Angus MacKinnon attributes [David Bowie's] restlessness as an artist to basic insecurity. There's no knowing the truth in such conjecture, of course."
  — David Hajdu, New York Times, 1 December 2017

has this page helped you understand "conjecture"?

Awesome, I'm glad it helped!

Thanks for letting me know!
If you have any questions about this term, please message me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.

study it:

Explain the meaning of "conjecture" without saying "surmise" or "guesswork."

try it out:

In the Washington Post, Steve Hendrix asked, "Is technology bringing history to life or distorting it?" For example, he pointed out, people have used audio clips from John F. Kennedy's speeches to make a new "recording" of him giving a speech he never actually gave. They had to rely on conjecture to put it together. 

As another example, a scholar developed digital recreations of Chicago's 1893 World Columbian Exposition, with "sections that are based on conjecture in a lighter shade than those that can be documented, just as dinosaur skeletons have plaster fill-ins for the missing bones."

In your opinion, is this kind of conjecture about history worthwhile, worthless, or somewhere in between? Why?

If you like, use this space to write. (To save your work, copy and paste it into an email or a document.)

before you review, play:

Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.

Our game this month is Subject Line Matching!

Try matching each capitalized term below with the email subject line that I used to introduce it. For an extra challenge, try recalling what each term means and how the subject line connects to it. 

Try these today:

FAIT ACCOMPLI: _____________
IMPETUOUS: _____________
ORPHIC: _____________
PROCRUSTEAN: _____________
SACROSANCT: _____________

a double holyburger
hold my beer
it's already been broughten
remember your flute, and watch for hellhounds
the worst kind of hacky sack

To see the correct answers, scroll all the way down.

review this word:

1. The opposite of CONJECTURE could be

A. PROOF.
B. PREPARATION.
C. PROFESSIONALISM.

2. As she watches families play in a park, Hazel, the narrator in John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, wonders about life after death, realizing that when her favorite author wrote that there is no afterlife, the statement wasn't fact but instead, conjecture: _____.

A. a dark joke
B. blatantly false
C. an uneducated guess

Answers to the review questions: 1. A 2. C From the game: FAIT ACCOMPLI: it's already been broughten IMPETUOUS: hold my beer ORPHIC: remember your flute, and watch for hellhounds PROCRUSTEAN: the worst kind of hacky sack SACROSANCT: a double holyburger

a final word:

I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love. I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words. From my blog: On vocabulary...       36 ways to study words.       Why we forget words, & how to remember them.       How to use sophisticated words without being awkward. On writing...       How to improve any sentence.       How to motivate our kids to write.       How to stop procrastinating and start writing.       How to bulk up your writing when you have to meet a word count. From my heart: a profound thanks to the generous patrons, donors, and sponsors that make it possible for me to write these emails. If you'd like to be a patron or a donor, please click here. If you'd like to be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com. A disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.