Synonyms

infer

American

[in-fur] / ɪnˈfɜr /

verb (used with object)

to derive by reasoning; conclude or judge from premises or evidence.

They inferred his displeasure from his cool tone of voice.

Synonyms:

suppose, conjecture, imagine, reason, deduce
(of facts, circumstances, statements, etc.) to indicate or involve as a conclusion; lead to.
to guess; speculate; surmise.
to hint; imply; suggest.

verb (used without object)

to draw a conclusion, as by reasoning.

infer British

/ ɪnˈfɜː /

verb

to conclude (a state of affairs, supposition, etc) by reasoning from evidence; deduce
(tr) to have or lead to as a necessary or logical consequence; indicate
(tr) to hint or imply

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Usage

Infer has been used to mean “to hint or suggest” since the 16th century by speakers and writers of unquestioned ability and eminence: The next speaker criticized the proposal, inferring that it was made solely to embarrass the government. Despite its long history, many usage guides condemn the use, maintaining that the proper word for the intended sense is imply and that to use infer is to lose a valuable distinction between the two words. Although the claimed distinction has probably existed chiefly in the pronouncements of usage guides, and although the use of infer to mean “to suggest” usually produces no ambiguity, the distinction too has a long history and is widely observed by many speakers and writers.

The use of infer to mean imply is becoming more and more common in both speech and writing. There is nevertheless a useful distinction between the two which many people would be in favour of maintaining. To infer means `to deduce', and is used in the construction to infer something from something : I inferred from what she said that she had not been well . To imply (sense 1) means `to suggest, to insinuate' and is normally followed by a clause: are you implying that I was responsible for the mistake?

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

Inflected Forms

Participles

Conjugated Forms

Present

Past

Future

Etymology

Origin of infer

First recorded in 1520–30; from Latin inferre, equivalent to in- + ferre “to bring, carry, bear”; see origin at in- ², bear ¹

Explanation

When you infer something, you read between the lines. To infer is to make a well informed guess — if you see your mom’s bag on the table, you might infer that she’s home. When you infer, you listen closely to someone and guess at things they mean but haven't actually said. It’s like guessing, but not making wild guesses. You're making deductions — guesses based on logic. Another kind of inferring is more scientific, like when a scientist has part of a dinosaur fossil and can infer what the rest of the dinosaur looked like. When you see the word infer, think "educated guess."

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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:

infer infers inferred inferring

"That material is normally permanently buried -- we can only infer what's there. Here, a catastrophic event essentially turned these ancient moons inside out, and we get to see what was hidden inside."

From Science Daily ● Aug. 14, 2026

When combined with current financial data, the model can infer a level of context about a person’s private life that many fail to realize, Bellini explained.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 1, 2026

Wearables shine LEDs into your skin, monitoring blood pumping through your veins to infer heart rate.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 7, 2026

Responding “We bought a Christmas tree” is a happy, cozy statement, reflecting that you will not be spending Christmas alone, or, one can infer, most likely dying alone too.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 22, 2026

Some dates, such as those for the rise of chiefdoms, are more difficult to infer from the archaeological record than are dates of artifacts like pottery or metal tools.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond

For many men, vulnerability frequently infers fragility, weakness and, perhaps in Gyllenhaal’s case, artistic insecurity.

From Salon ● May 27, 2026

Rather than randomly sampling the noise term, their approximation technique infers the missing term from the current 3D shape rendering.

From Science Daily ● Dec. 4, 2024

Estonia's NLP algorithms break down a request into small segments, identify key words, and from that infers what user wants.

From BBC ● Jul. 8, 2024

When you say you are “not expecting to receive many gifts, except from the few friends attending,” Miss Manners infers that you have misplaced your grammar and not your priorities.

From Washington Post ● Sep. 1, 2022

Significantly, however, he counted men "from 7 to 40 years" and infers that the village had a population of 300.

From The Aboriginal Population of the San Joaquin Valley, California by Sherburne F. Cook

“But what can’t be inferred from the index is the future value of those currencies,” added Cox in a video interview from his base in Hong Kong.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 31, 2026

But, he said, "There is no evidence from which it can be inferred Mr Badea had knowledge of those matters."

From BBC ● Jul. 3, 2026

From it, the court just inferred that it must recognize serious, heady limits on Congress’ power to spend the tax dollars it has collected.

From Slate ● Jun. 23, 2026

Demographic information was largely absent, beyond what could be inferred from appearance.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 21, 2026

Since all other Niger-Congo speakers, as well as the Bantu, are blacks, we couldn’t have inferred who migrated in which direction just from the evidence of physical anthropology.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond

It’s not even a case of inferring reality from a dog that didn’t bark.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026

Not all of the King's speech needed inferring.

From BBC ● Apr. 29, 2026

But TS Lombard economist Dario Perkins said inferring anything of value from the chart would actually be a mistake.

From MarketWatch ● Nov. 6, 2025

However, Stas acknowledges that the companion is still inferring and reflecting back a user’s cues.

From Slate ● Sep. 25, 2025

This practice of inferring the motivations and intentions of others is classic thin-slicing.

From "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023