speculated
- 1Simple past tense and past participle of speculate.
Reporters speculated about the real cause of the sudden resignation.
Investors have speculated heavily in untested technology stocks this year.
Note
One spelling does two jobs: the simple past (they speculated) and, after have, the past participle (they have speculated). Every sense of speculate is intransitive, so what is speculated about arrives through a preposition, and the preposition helps tell the senses apart: speculated about a cause is guessing, while speculated in stocks is trading. The older meaning "reflected" or "meditated" is obsolete, so modern prose rarely uses speculated that way.
speculated is a form of speculate
speculate, verb: To form an opinion or conclusion from evidence that is incomplete or uncertain. Full entry
- Forms
- speculatespeculates he/she/itspeculating -ing formspeculated past tense, past participle
- Spelling
- speculate → speculated: add -d
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /ɪd/, an extra syllable.
Use it in a sentence
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