19 uses
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Definition
to figure out or guess by reasoning
- To get all the advantage of being with men of this sort, you must know how to draw your inferences, and not be a spoon who takes things literally.Book 3 — Waiting for Death (13% in)
- Dorothea's inferences may seem large; but really life could never have gone on at any period but for this liberal allowance of conclusions, which has facilitated marriage under the difficulties of civilization.Book 1 — Miss Brooke (14% in)
- "—from which it might be inferred that she would have found the country-side somewhat duller if the Rector's lady had been less free-spoken and less of a skinflint.Book 1 — Miss Brooke (40% in)
- Mr. Bulstrode had also a deferential bending attitude in listening, and an apparently fixed attentiveness in his eyes which made those persons who thought themselves worth hearing infer that he was seeking the utmost improvement from their discourse.Book 2 — Old and Young (1% in)
- ...its peculiar sanction to the expensive and highly rarefied medical instruction obtained by graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, did not hinder quackery from having an excellent time of it; for since professional practice chiefly consisted in giving a great many drugs, the public inferred that it might be better off with more drugs still, if they could only be got cheaply, and hence swallowed large cubic measures of physic prescribed by unscrupulous ignorance which had taken no degrees.Book 2 — Old and Young (23% in)
- There was fascination in the hope that the two purposes would illuminate each other: the careful observation and inference which was his daily work, the use of the lens to further his judgment in special cases, would further his thought as an instrument of larger inquiry.Book 2 — Old and Young (24% in)
- The Vicar's talk was not always inspiriting: he had escaped being a Pharisee, but he had not escaped that low estimate of possibilities which we rather hastily arrive at as an inference from our own failure.Book 2 — Old and Young (64% in)
- And this cruel outward accuser was there in the shape of a wife—nay, of a young bride, who, instead of observing his abundant pen-scratches and amplitude of paper with the uncritical awe of an elegant-minded canary-bird, seemed to present herself as a spy watching everything with a malign power of inference.Book 2 — Old and Young (76% in)
- He now inferred that she had asked her uncle to invite Will to the Grange; and she felt it impossible at that moment to enter into any explanation.Book 4 — Three Love Problems (6% in)
- Casaubon informs me that a proposal has been made to you, and (according to an inference by no means stretched) has on your part been in some degree entertained, which involves your residence in this neighborhood in a capacity which I am justified in saying touches my own position in such a way as renders it not only natural and warrantable in me when that effect is viewed under the influence of legitimate feeling, but incumbent on me when the same effect is considered in the light of...Book 4 — Three Love Problems (46% in)
- He had been preoccupied with his own vindication, and had been blind to what Ladislaw might infer on his own account.Book 5 — The Dead Hand (36% in)
- Of course, as a servant who was to be told nothing, he knew the fact of which Ladislaw was still ignorant, and had drawn his inferences; indeed, had not differed from his betrothed Tantripp when she said, "Your master was as jealous as a fiend—and no reason.Book 6 — The Widow and Wife (6% in)
- She answered, wanting to check unintended consequences— "I spoke from inference only.Book 6 — The Widow and Wife (39% in)
- It was an inference with a conspicuous handle to it, and had been easily drawn by indifferent observers, that Lydgate was in debt; and he could not succeed in keeping out of his mind for long together that he was every day getting deeper into that swamp, which tempts men towards it with such a pretty covering of flowers and verdure.Book 6 — The Widow and Wife (51% in)
- ...and other initial expenses come to between four and five hundred pounds more than he has capital to pay for; when at the end of a year it appears that his household expenses, horses and et caeteras, amount to nearly a thousand, while the proceeds of the practice reckoned from the old books to be worth eight hundred per annum have sunk like a summer pond and make hardly five hundred, chiefly in unpaid entries, the plain inference is that, whether he minds it or not, he is in debt.Book 6 — The Widow and Wife (51% in)
- His large whiskers, imposing swagger, and swing of the leg, made him a striking figure; but his suit of black, rather shabby at the edges, caused the prejudicial inference that he was not able to afford himself as much indulgence as he liked.Book 6 — The Widow and Wife (71% in)
- Mr Hawley drew his inferences, and feeling convinced that Raffles had told his story to Garth, and that Garth had given up Bulstrode's affairs in consequence, said so a few hours later to Mr. Toller.Book 7 — Two Temptations (86% in)
- The statement was passed on until it had quite lost the stamp of an inference, and was taken as information coming straight from Garth, so that even a diligent historian might have concluded Caleb to be the chief publisher of Bulstrode's misdemeanors.Book 7 — Two Temptations (86% in)
- The inferences were closely linked enough; the town knew of the loan, believed it to be a bribe, and believed that he took it as a bribe.Book 7 — Two Temptations (99% in)
There are no more uses of "infer" in Middlemarch.
Typical Usage
(best examples)