estimate
Americanverb (used with object)
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estimates,
present (3rd person singular)
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estimated,
past participle, past
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estimating
present participle
verb (used without object)
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estimates,
present (3rd person singular)
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estimated,
past participle, past
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estimating
present participle
noun
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estimates
plural
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an approximate judgment or calculation, as of the value, amount, time, size, or weight of something.
- Synonyms:
- appraisal, calculation, valuation
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a judgment or opinion, as of the qualities of a person or thing.
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a statement of the approximate charge for work to be done, submitted by a person or business firm ready to undertake the work.
verb
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to form an approximate idea of (distance, size, cost, etc); calculate roughly; gauge
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(tr; may take a clause as object) to form an opinion about; judge
to estimate one's chances
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to submit (an approximate price) for (a job) to a prospective client
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(tr) statistics to assign a value (a point estimate ) or range of values (an interval estimate ) to a parameter of a population on the basis of sampling statistics See estimator
noun
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an approximate calculation
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a statement indicating the likely charge for or cost of certain work
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a judgment; appraisal; opinion
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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estimatornoun
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preestimatenoun
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reestimatenoun
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self-estimatenoun
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preestimateverb (used with object)
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reestimateverb (used with object)
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estimativeadjective
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unestimatedadjective
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well-estimatedadjective
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estimatinglyadverb
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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estimatesimple
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estimatessimple
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have estimatedperfect
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has estimatedperfect
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am estimatingprogressive
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are estimatingprogressive
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is estimatingprogressive
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have been estimatingperfect progressive
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has been estimatingperfect progressive
Past
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estimatedsimple
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had estimatedperfect
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was estimatingprogressive
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were estimatingprogressive
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had been estimatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of estimate
First recorded in 1525–35; from Latin aestimātus “valued,” past participle of aestimāre “to value, fix the value of”
Explanation
A rough calculation or appraisal is an estimate. When you hit another baseball through the kitchen window, your parents will get an estimate of the repair costs. And you should estimate being grounded for approximately 3 weeks. An estimate is kind of like a very educated guess. Making an estimate takes good evaluation skills, and usually estimates are pretty close to the actual outcome. If the garage bill is way higher than the estimate they gave you, for example, you have a right to be angry. But if you forgot to factor in rush hour traffic when you estimated the drive from Boston to New York, that's your own fault.
Vocabulary lists containing estimate
Jim Burke's Academic Vocabulary List
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Arithmetic
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Tax Day Words
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Still, Dallas president Lorie Logan warned: "I currently estimate the target range needs to rise an additional 50 basis points or more to appropriately balance the outlook and risks for our dual mandate goals."
From Barron's ● Oct. 2, 2026
The renovation’s cost had more than doubled since the first estimate in 2019, and it was years behind schedule.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 1, 2026
Even if they took the $1,000 and never added another cent to the account, the money could grow to approximately $5,000 in 18 years, according to one McKinsey & Co. estimate.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 1, 2026
Supporters estimate the tax would raise about $100 billion that would offset federal funding cuts.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 1, 2026
He used these to calculate life expectancies for each age group, and to estimate the population of London, which he concluded was 460,000—not, as had been claimed, 7 million or so.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
By its own estimates, it controls around half of the U.S. frozen single-serve meal market when measured by volume, or the amount of items sold.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 2, 2026
Taken together, sales by Detroit’s three big automakers declined in the third quarter, according to sales reports and estimates from industry-research firm Cox Automotive.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 1, 2026
Analysts also expect Tesla to have deployed 15.9 gigawatt hours of energy-storage products last quarter, according to estimates compiled by the company.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 1, 2026
At present, building and launching the orbital equivalent of a 1-gigawatt data center on Earth would cost around $30 billion, Elbert estimates.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 1, 2026
Indeed, it is the same figure provided by Las Casas, patron saint of High Counters, foremost among the old Spanish sources whose estimates Henige spends many pages discounting.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
About 84%-90% of hiring is estimated to replace departing workers, leaving net workforce growth at around 3%, excluding outsourced semiconductor assembly and testing companies.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 2, 2026
But drought, pesticides and habitat destruction triggered an unprecedented collapse that began in 2017, eventually wiping out an estimated 99.5 percent of the Bogong moth population.
From Barron's ● Oct. 2, 2026
Tens of thousands of people are estimated to have fled their homes there.
From BBC ● Oct. 2, 2026
Many more children appear to be eligible for the accounts: An estimated 72 million children under age 18 live in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 1, 2026
The final number is estimated at more than two hundred thousand.
From "At Last She Stood" by Erin Entrada Kelly
That finding challenges the usual way scientists interpret thermal stress and provides a new approach for estimating total heat exposure across coastal ecosystems.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 30, 2026
That commentary suggests the risk to September jobs could be higher than what analysts are estimating.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 27, 2026
But relatives had some concerns about his weight, estimating the boy to be about 200 pounds.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 18, 2026
Some current and former employees at Anthropic and OpenAI echoed his assessment, with one estimating the chance that “AI could kill all humans” at more than 10%.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026
It’s a simple way of estimating how many friends and acquaintances you have.
From "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
