guessing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of guess.

   He was guessing wildly about the test results all afternoon.

   Guessing the locked door's code took her nearly twenty tries.

   Note

   Here the -ing form still behaves like a verb. After a form of be it builds the progressive (she was guessing). Standing alone, it is a gerund that can take a direct object, as in guessing the code. That object is the quickest test against the noun for the act. The noun takes adjectives and of (wild guessing, the guessing of riddles), while the gerund takes objects and adverbs (guessing wildly).

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of making a guess; an estimate or prediction formed without certain knowledge.

   The detective's success owed more to careful reasoning than to guessing.

   Her lucky guessing on the final section pulled her grade back up.

   Similarguesswork, speculation, conjecture

   Note

   Middle English already had this noun as gessyng, which is guess plus the -ing that turns verbs into nouns. It can be counted, so guessings is possible. It can also stretch toward foresight, a reading of what is coming rather than a stab at an answer. Unlike the verb form, it takes adjectives rather than objects: lucky guessing, idle guessing.

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