All 4 Uses of
conjecture
in
A Prayer for Owen Meany
- Pay attention to where Tess's child is buried—'in that shabby corner of God's allotment where he lets the nettles grow, and where all unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides, and others of the conjecturally damned are laid.'†
p. 313.3
- rapture of so much amateur conjecturing and surmising would flush their faces as irrepressibly as blood!†
p. 435.9 *conjecturing = concluding or guessing based on inconclusive evidence
- I'm referring to Lockwood's description of Joseph, I've been pointing it out to them for so many years that I know the passage by heart: 'looking ...in my face so sourly that I charitably conjectured he must have need of divine aid to digest his dinner ...'†
p. 531.6conjectured = concluded or guessed based on inconclusive evidence
- And when she met and became engaged to Dan Needham, how that must have threatened to put an end to his conjecturing; and when she married Dan, how that must have threatened to put an end to the self-inflicted pain of which he had grown so fond.†
p. 555.9conjecturing = concluding or guessing based on inconclusive evidence
Definition:
a conclusion or opinion based on inconclusive evidence; or the act of forming of such a conclusion or opinion
A conjecture can be widely believed, but the word is also frequently used to imply that evidence is insufficient to support a belief.