suspicion

Pluralsuspicions (some meanings)

Formssuspicions, suspicioning, suspicioned

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The act of believing, often without firm proof, that a person or thing is responsible for something wrong.

   The detective's suspicion settled on the gardener after he changed his story.

   Years of broken promises had filled her with suspicion toward every salesman she met.

   Similardistrust, mistrust, wariness, doubt

   Oppositetrust, confidence, faith

   Note

   Behind the word is a picture of looking up at someone: Latin suspīciō, from suspicere, joining sub- "up to" with specere "to look at", reaching English as Middle English suspecioun. Its everyday verbs show how the feeling behaves. Something arouses suspicion, and people view a challenge with suspicion. The plural comes naturally too. In Barbara Sleigh's Jessamy, a cherubic face would have aroused the suspicions of anyone who knew its owner.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The condition of being suspected of guilt or wrongdoing by others.

   The accountant remained under suspicion long after the audit had cleared everyone else.

   Being the last to leave the office placed him squarely under suspicion.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   The forming of a belief about something in the absence of any supporting evidence.

   He had a nagging suspicion that the deal was too good to be true.

   A vague suspicion of being followed kept her glancing over her shoulder.

   Similarhunch, feeling, inkling, impression, notion

4. 4
   nounusually singular

   A slight trace or faint hint of something, barely enough to detect.

   The sauce carried only a suspicion of garlic, easy to miss entirely.

   A suspicion of frost still lingered on the grass at dawn.

   Similarhint, trace, touch, tinge, whiff

   Note

   It almost always comes as "a suspicion of" followed by a noun, a gentle understatement for something barely there. Examples include a suspicion of a smile, of saturnine humor in Adolphus William Ward's Chaucer (1879), and of butter polished over a dish in Dorothy Hartley's Food in England. Unlike the suspecting sense, nothing here is wrong or blameworthy. The thing is simply faint.

5. 5
   noununcountable

   A general feeling of uncertainty or doubt about something.

   She trusted the report without the slightest suspicion of error.

   Lingering suspicion about the figures led the board to request a second review.

   Similardoubt, misgiving, uncertainty, qualm

   Oppositecertainty, confidence

6. 6
   verbdialectaltransitive

   To suspect someone or something, or to have suspicions about a matter.

   I suspicion she knows a good deal more than she's letting on.

   Folks around here suspicion any stranger who comes asking too many questions.

   Similarsuspect, distrust

   Oppositetrust

   Note

   A verb that lives in dialogue: novelists give it to characters whose speech marks where they come from. Mark Twain's characters use it in 1876, Kipling's soldier Mulvaney in 1891, and a sheriff in B. M. Bower's Cow-Country. It inflects regularly (suspicioned, suspicioning). It takes either an object ("anybody would suspicion us") or a clause. Outside quoted speech, standard English uses suspect.

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