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:
“We’ll infer from the minutes what Warsh wants us to know and what he doesn’t want us to know. That will give us information on how he intends to run the show,” he said.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 7, 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
One might infer, as Baier suggested in his Friday interview, that Iran’s nuclear ambitions are thus effectively contained.
From Slate ● May 18, 2026
Given this background, one could infer, if one did not know it already, the general structure of Oceanic society.
From "1984" by George Orwell
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
This season's action infers that maybe the law is less practical in dealing with people like Gator and Roy than a sense of justice and a fierce survival instinct.
From Salon ● Nov. 21, 2023
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
The former infers from the particular in a present perception, which in previous perceptions was uniformly connected with other particular contents of perception, to a particular that resembles those other contents of perception.
From International Congress of Arts and Science, Volume I Philosophy and Metaphysics by Various
Among the biggest mysteries are the surprisingly low concentrations of dark matter found at the centers of some dwarf galaxies and the unexpectedly dense dark matter clumps inferred from strong gravitational lensing.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 14, 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
Lacking data on who actually adopted DEI, the authors inferred the presence of such policies.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 13, 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
The Amsterdam News reported the planned meeting and many readers inferred that we were establishing our beginning mosque in the Theresa.
From "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Alex Malcolm X;Hailey
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
The other is growing the right branches, that is, inferring how the words are supposed to join up in phrases.
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
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.
