infer
Americanverb (used with object)
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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
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(of facts, circumstances, statements, etc.) to indicate or involve as a conclusion; lead to.
verb (used without object)
verb
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to conclude (a state of affairs, supposition, etc) by reasoning from evidence; deduce
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(tr) to have or lead to as a necessary or logical consequence; indicate
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(tr) to hint or imply
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
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inferrernoun
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misinferverb
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subinferverb
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inferableadjective
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inferrableadjective
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noninferableadjective
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uninferableadjective
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inferablyadverb
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noninferablyadverb
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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infersimple
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inferssimple
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have inferredperfect
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has inferredperfect
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am inferringprogressive
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are inferringprogressive
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is inferringprogressive
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have been inferringperfect progressive
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has been inferringperfect progressive
Past
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inferredsimple
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had inferredperfect
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was inferringprogressive
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were inferringprogressive
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had been inferringperfect progressive
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."
Vocabulary lists containing infer
The SAT: Language of the Test, List 1
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Jim Burke's Academic Vocabulary List
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Vocabulary of the Common Core
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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:
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
Even though the wearables can only infer the stages, using heart rate and movement data, they kept up pretty well.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 7, 2026
Our intention in making this show was, again, what we know about their lived reality, but what can we infer might have happened behind those closed doors.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 4, 2026
"We're trying to infer processes from incomplete clues, often with very limited data collected by missions that are extraordinarily expensive and infrequent."
From Science Daily ● May 12, 2026
“You have to infer the whole dragon from the parts you can see and touch,” the old people would say.
From "The Woman Warrior" by Maxine Hong Kingston
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
"And this model infers whether the vessel is likely a fishing vessel or not a fishing vessel, like passenger vessels, oil tankers, shipping vessels and that kind of stuff."
From BBC ● Apr. 3, 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
From this fact every one infers that the poor child was led to such excesses by her parents, as she herself declares to everybody.
From The Old Yellow Book Source of Robert Browning's The Ring and the Book by Anonymous
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
"For many cosmic-ray events taken together, their energy distribution, arrival-direction pattern and statistically inferred composition provide important clues about where these particles come from and how they are accelerated."
From Science Daily ● Jun. 9, 2026
That case, the company said, “related to an engineer following inaccurate advice that an AI tool inferred from an outdated internal wiki,” and none involved “AI-written code.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 30, 2026
It added that even if some viewers inferred innuendo, it did not contain explicit content or objectifying imagery.
From BBC ● Feb. 18, 2026
The more argon found, the more neutrinos inferred.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
A senior living alone might not fully understand what the robot in the corner is observing, inferring or reporting.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 23, 2026
"You can see the effects clearly, but the real challenge is inferring the hidden cause."
From Science Daily ● May 6, 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
Obtaining Personal Information The name of the game in statistics is the inferring of information about a large population by examining characteristics of a small, randomly selected sample.
From "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences" by John Allen Paulos
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.
