guesswork

See also: guess-work

English

Alternative forms

• guess-work

Etymology

From guess +‎ work. Compare Dutch giswerk (“guesswork”).

Pronunciation

• Audio (US):

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Noun

guesswork (countable and uncountable, plural guessworks)

1. An estimate, judgment or opinion made by guessing, from limited information.
   • 1911, William Anthony Granville, Elements of the Differential and Integral Calculus:

     By a careful study of the figure we might suspect that when the rectangle becomes a square its area would be the greatest, but this would at best be mere guesswork. A better way would evidently be to plot the graph of the function (1) and note its behavior.

Synonyms

• conjecture

Related terms

• guesstimate

Translations

estimate, judgment or opinion

Arabic: please add this translation if you can Catalan: conjectures (ca) f pl Chinese: Mandarin: 猜測 / 猜测 (zh) (cāicè), 推測 / 推测 (zh) (tuīcè) Dutch: giswerk (nl) n Estonian: mõistatamine, oletus Finnish: arvailu (fi), arvaus (fi) French: extrapolation (fr) f German: Mutmaßung (de) f, Vermutung (de), Raterei f, Rätselraten n Greek: εικασία (el) f (eikasía), υπολογισμός (el) m (ypologismós), κρίση (el) f (krísi), γνώμη (el) f (gnómi) Ido: konjekto (io) Italian: supposizione (it) f, congettura (it) f, ipotesi (it) m pl Japanese: 当て推量 (ja) (atezuiryou) Polish: domysł (pl) m, przypuszczenie (pl) n Portuguese: conjeturas (pt) f pl, suposições f pl, achismo (pt) m (informal) Russian: до́мысел (ru) m (dómysel) Spanish: adivinanza (es) f, conjeturas (es) f pl, suposiciones (es) f pl Swedish: gissning (sv)

See also

• dead reckoning