hypothetically
Americanadverb
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according to what is assumed as a premise in an argument.
Hypothetically, without friction or other resistance a toy car on a track could cruise along indefinitely, provided it never went higher than its starting point.
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in a way that is theoretically possible but not proven; conjecturally; speculatively.
Hypothetically, these nanobots would be able to traverse any type of terrain and would therefore be ideal for exploration missions on other planets.
While hypothetically this could be the case, you appear to have no evidence to support it.
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according to what is assumed or imagined; supposedly.
I do legal transcription and hypothetically clean the house while my children are at school.
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of hypothetically
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.
In other words, said the suit, “America’s dairy farmers funded research to study hypothetically eliminating their livelihood.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 25, 2026
The Hugging Face hack has been treated as a 'wake-up call' within the industry for the ways in which AI technology has advanced and could hypothetically act in ways that could harm humanity.
From BBC ● Sep. 23, 2026
“Even if the war were hypothetically to end tomorrow, the price of oil is still going to be higher versus a year ago for a minimum of the next one to two months,” said Molchanov.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 10, 2026
But even if that’s not the end of the brutal crypto selloff, Strategy “has the wherewithal to ride out a hypothetically much steeper Bitcoin rout,” TD Cowen analyst Lance Vitanza said in a note Friday.
From Barron's ● Feb. 6, 2026
I’d been speaking hypothetically about moving to New York a year early.
From "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls
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.
