Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Given to conjecturing or to depending on mere conjecture: as, a conjectural critic.
  • Depending on conjecture; springing from or implying a guess or conjecture; problematical: as, a conjectural opinion; a conjectural emendation of a text.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Dependent on conjecture; fancied; imagined; guessed at; undetermined; doubtful.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective In the nature of a conjecture, or based on a conjecture.
  • noun Something that is conjectural; a conjecture.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective based primarily on surmise rather than adequate evidence

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The only physical cause for the practice which suggests itself to me and that must be owned to be purely conjectural, is that within the Sotadic Zone there is a blending of the masculine and feminine temperaments, a crasis which elsewhere occurs only sporadically.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • Already we can see how such advances have brought about a watershed in conjectural modeling in humanistic fields such as art conservation.

    Introduction 2003

  • When there is a dispute as to the fact, since the cause is confirmed by conjectures, it is called a conjectural statement.

    The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 Marcus Tullius Cicero

  • I tried the theme again before I abandoned it, and was so fortunate as to get him to admit a degree of improvement such as led to his desiring to recall his conjectural judgment on my possibilities as a sonnet-writer, but as the letters in which he characterises the advance are neither so terse in criticism, nor so interesting from the exposition of principles, as the one quoted, I pass them by.

    Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti Hall Caine 1892

  • Phillipson devotes a "conjectural" chapter to reconstructing lectures on jurisprudence that Smith may or may not have delivered in Edinburgh in the winter of 1750-51.

    Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life by Nicholas Phillipson 2010

  • 'conjectural' history, Ricardo did not mean to state a historical fact.

    The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) James Mill Leslie Stephen 1868

  • Our ship's position in this waste of storm and sea is conjectural.

    CHAPTER XXXV 2010

  • How much farther it might have run is conjectural; for, after one big game, he never played again.

    THE FAITH OF MEN 2010

  • I slipped away from the port and went along the deck to the break of the poop, where I held on and stood staring through the gray and spray in the conjectural direction of our drift.

    CHAPTER XXXVIII 2010

  • However, architect William Burges admitted that the towers' conical roofs were "utterly conjectural".

    Victorian and Edwardian buildings: examples from the era 2011

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  • 1553 T. WILSON Rhet. 49b, The oration conjectural is when matters be examined and tryed out by suspicions gathered, and some likelihode of thinge appearinge.

    May 15, 2008