Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To conclude from evidence or by reasoning.
- intransitive verb To involve by logical necessity; entail.
- intransitive verb To indicate indirectly; imply.
- intransitive verb To draw inferences.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To bring in, on, or about; lead forward or advance; adduce.
- To form as an opinion or belief in consequence of something else observed or believed; derive as a fact or consequence, by reasoning of any kind; accept from evidence or premises; conclude.
- To bear presumption or proof of; imply.
- To conclude; reach a conclusion by reasoning.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb obsolete To bring on; to induce; to occasion.
- transitive verb obsolete To offer, as violence.
- transitive verb obsolete To bring forward, or employ as an argument; to adduce; to allege; to offer.
- transitive verb To derive by deduction or by induction; to conclude or surmise from facts or premises; to accept or derive, as a consequence, conclusion, or probability.
- transitive verb obsolete To show; to manifest; to prove.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb obsolete To
show ; tomanifest ; toprove .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb draw from specific cases for more general cases
- verb reason by deduction; establish by deduction
- verb guess correctly; solve by guessing
- verb conclude by reasoning; in logic
- verb believe to be the case
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Who decides whether it's acceptable to end a sentence with a preposition or to use the word "infer" as a synonym for "imply"?
Grappling Grammarians Barton Swaim 2011
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I cannot infer from the opinion in Green that this statute had even been enacted when Burns was decided in1872.
The Volokh Conspiracy » At Least a Dozen Flag Desecration Prosecutions in the U.S. Since 1992 2010
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I infer from the question that this is purely and simply a coyote rifle.
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Am I to infer from the video that Phil shot at those duck decoy with the slingshot!
Live from SHOT: New Guns, New Gear, and Autographed Panties 2010
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I infer from the question that this is purely and simply a coyote rifle.
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It is simpleminded to infer from the rate at which intermarriage was increasing in one decade and the rate it was increasing in the subsequent decade that a fall off must reflect an unfavorable “trend” with respect to progress toward greater interracial harmony.
The Volokh Conspiracy » How to Turn Good News into Bad News 2010
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As one might infer from the title, the US President is involved.
Book review Maxine 2009
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I cannot infer from the opinion in Green that this statute had even been enacted when Burns was decided in1872.
The Volokh Conspiracy » At Least a Dozen Flag Desecration Prosecutions in the U.S. Since 1992 2010
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As one might infer from the title, the US President is involved.
April 2009 Maxine 2009
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Consequently, it is wrong to infer from the risk-free rate that there is no constraint on borrowing or that the rate of return on capital investment is negative.
Liquidity Trap, II, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
dimã©lion commented on the word infer
i like words that seem to be snippets of longer, older words... not sure of why.
November 16, 2008
mollusque commented on the word infer
There's a list of back-formations. I don't think that "infer" is an example of one, though.
November 16, 2008
bilby commented on the word infer
Infer a penny, infer a pound.
February 4, 2013
dailyword commented on the word infer
Holmes does this a lot when he is working on cases.
July 25, 2013