Home › Glossary › Letter S

surmise

Noun
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A conjecture or guess based on meager evidence; used in reflective and detective poetry to mark moments of deduction or doubt.

Detailed Definition
This word means an uncertain inference or guess. In the poem it captures the men’s stunned, wordless attempt to make sense of the Pacific, emphasizing their amazement and uncertainty.
Example
Example in poetry:
Keats’s “Looked at each other with a wild surmise” captures awed, uncertain inference; “By the unsealed letter, she could only surmise his leaving” shows the noun as a guess from clues; “Our surmise became a map of stars” links speculation to discovery; “Wild surmise: that the lost voice might answer” preserves Keats’s charged uncertainty.
Additional Notes
"Surmise" is less common in everyday reading than ordinary vocabulary, and the line uses it in a slightly elevated literary sense.; Found in the poem, On first looking into Chapman's Homer by John Keats
Also Known As
infer conjecture speculate deduce
Skip to main content