All 11 Uses of
speculate
in
Bleak House
- It wandered back to my godmother's house and came along the intervening track, raising up shadowy speculations which had sometimes trembled there in the dark as to what knowledge Mr. Jarndyce had of my earliest history—even as to the possibility of his being my father, though that idle dream was quite gone now.
Chpt 4-6 (definition 1)speculations = thoughts or guesses
- I did not speculate upon the source from which it came or wonder whose humanity was so considerate.
Chpt 13-15 (definition 1) *speculate = think
- …of his heart and his earnest desire to do all the good in his power; but that he felt it to be too often an unsatisfactory company, where benevolence took spasmodic forms, where charity was assumed as a regular uniform by loud professors and speculators in cheap notoriety, vehement in profession, restless and vain in action, servile in the last degree of meanness to the great, adulatory of one another, and intolerable to those who were anxious quietly to help the weak from failing…†
Chpt 13-15 (definition 2)
- She told him that there were many handsome English ladies in India who went out on speculation, and that there were some to be picked up with property, but that neither charms nor wealth would suffice for the descendant from such a line without birth, which must ever be the first consideration.
Chpt 16-18 (definition 2)speculation = a risky venture
- An open letter is the subject of the trooper's speculations, and it seems to perplex him mightily.
Chpt 34-36 (definition 1)speculations = thoughts or wonderings
- I know it to be unnecessary and calculated to awaken speculation, doubt, rumour, I don't know what, in the house.
Chpt 46-48 (definition 1)speculation = thoughts and guesses
- Mr. Bagnet merely distinguishes that epoch in the musical instrument business by kissing the children with an extra smack before breakfast, smoking an additional pipe after dinner, and wondering towards evening what his poor old mother is thinking about it—a subject of infinite speculation, and rendered so by his mother having departed this life twenty years.
Chpt 49-51 (definition 1)speculation = theorizing
- Quebec and Malta here exclaim, with clapping of hands, that Bluffy is sure to bring mother something, and begin to speculate on what it will be.
Chpt 49-51 (definition 1)speculate = think or guess
- You see, that little pickled cowcumber of a Mrs. Snagsby has been used by all sides of the speculation and has done a deal more harm in bringing odds and ends together than if she had meant it.
Chpt 52-54 (definition 1)speculation = theorizing
- If it had been a speculation, sir, it would have brought money.
Chpt 58-60 (definition 2) *speculation = risky investment
- As I naturally speculated on the object of these visits, and as I always associated something ludicrous with the visitor, it fell out that in laughing about Mr. Guppy I told my guardian of his old proposal and his subsequent retraction.
Chpt 64-65 (definition 1)speculated = thought
Definitions:
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(1) (speculate as in: don't know, but I'll speculate) to think about, wonder, guess or theorize with much uncertainty
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(2) (speculate as in: speculate in the stock market) to take a risk for profit--typically a risky investment