speculating

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of speculate.

   Investors were speculating heavily on the new tech stocks.

   Reporters kept speculating about the cause of the sudden resignation.

   Note

   The -ing form carries each living sense of speculate: guessing on thin evidence, trading at risk in hope of profit, and the computing sense in which a processor runs a branch of code before knowing it will be chosen. The older meaning of quiet reflection is obsolete, so a modern reader hears conjecture or a gamble, not meditation. The same spelling also serves as the noun for speculation.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The forming of theories or guesses without solid evidence, or the practice of making risky investments in hopes of large gains.

   Endless speculating about the merger filled the financial pages for weeks.

   Her fortune came from shrewd speculating on undervalued land.

   Similarspeculation, conjecture, guesswork, theorizing, gambling

   Note

   A noun that usually resists counting, as most nouns built from -ing forms do. It can still take a plural when separate bouts of theorizing are meant. Thomas Carlyle, in Goethe's Works (1832), writes of "a long course of theatrical speculatings and practisings." Beside speculation, its everyday equivalent, it keeps the feel of an activity still under way, which is why it sits comfortably after words like endless.

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