speculates
- 1Third-person singular simple present of speculate.
The columnist speculates that interest rates will fall before the end of the year.
Whenever a celebrity vanishes from the headlines, the public speculates about the reason.
Note
One spelling serves every meaning the verb now has: guessing on thin evidence, gambling on a risky trade, and a processor's trick of running a branch of code before it is chosen. All are intransitive, so the form takes a clause or a preposition rather than a direct object: she speculates that prices will rise; he speculates about the motive. The older sense of simply reflecting on a subject is obsolete.
speculates 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 → speculates: add -s
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /s/.
Use it in a sentence
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