intuit
Americanverb (used with or without object)
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intuits,
present (3rd person singular)
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intuited,
past participle, past
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intuiting
present participle
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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intuitsimple
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intuitssimple
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have intuitedperfect
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has intuitedperfect
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am intuitingprogressive
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are intuitingprogressive
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is intuitingprogressive
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have been intuitingperfect progressive
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has been intuitingperfect progressive
Past
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intuitedsimple
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had intuitedperfect
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was intuitingprogressive
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were intuitingprogressive
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had been intuitingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of intuit
First recorded in 1770–80; back formation from intuition
Explanation
To intuit is to get a strong sense of something using only your intuition. You might give up on a job interview halfway through, if you intuit that the job wouldn't be a good fit for you. When you have a hunch about something, you intuit. For example, a pregnant woman might intuit that she's having twins, and a teacher might intuit that a student is having a hard day and needs some extra attention. The earliest meaning of intuit was "to tutor," until the mid-19th century. The word comes from the Latin root intueri, "look at, comprehend, or contemplate."
Vocabulary lists containing intuit
Little Fires Everywhere
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Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
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Umberto Eco (1932-2016) Tribute List
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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:
Davis, who got his start in Columbia Records’ legal department, could identify original voices and seemed to intuit which songs were likely to become hits.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 22, 2026
“Children,” she notes in “The Well-Educated Child,” “can intuit how you feel about them,” which is “why we hired people who genuinely loved kids.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 12, 2026
I look for patterns and try to intuit a policy out of the behavior and the decisions.
From Slate ● May 24, 2025
As you may intuit, this movie belongs to a very particular subgenre summed up in one declaration: boy, small English towns are full of weirdos.
From New York Times ● Mar. 28, 2024
Theo gives a formal bow at the neck, which he must intuit would appeal to my father’s sense of respect and decorum.
From "The Brightwood Code" by Monica Hesse
For the target, as “Fellow Travelers” intuits, isn’t queerness, or racial equality, or anti-capitalism per se, but nonconformity of any sort, which power seeks to stamp out for its own preservation.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 10, 2023
But what a child intuits, grown scientists struggle to understand in detail.
From Science Magazine ● Apr. 6, 2023
She doesn’t know what the adults are going through, but she intuits how they feel.
From New York Times ● Mar. 23, 2023
With surprising ease, she intuits how they operate.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 18, 2021
When I walk back onto the street, the father intuits my apprehension.
From "I Am the Messenger" by Markus Zusak
Growing up in Hawaii, she came from a long line of “kitchen witches,” she explains — women who intuited measurements, spices and when a cake was done from the next room.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 22, 2026
Study after study now confirms what my father and mother intuited long before science caught up.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 1, 2026
Give Twain full credit: When writing that novel, he also intuited that the economic juggernaut driving his Gilded Age would come crashing down in what proved to be the devastating panic of 1893.
From Salon ● Jul. 30, 2025
As Diamond intuited, geographic mechanisms were significant in some areas, but the continent's dominant axis did not uniformly dictate the potential for cultural spread.
From Science Daily ● Feb. 14, 2024
This philosopher is certainly not Newcomen; but Desaguliers had, I think, correctly intuited the only plausible route to the invention of the Newcomen engine.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
The company invented Alexa, intuiting people’s interest in speaking with computers, yet when OpenAI released ChatGPT it seemed to cede the territory.
From Slate ● Jul. 31, 2023
But the showrunner Michael Patrick King, now the creator of “And Just Like That …,” tried to convince him otherwise, intuiting that Corbett could supply the affection and warmth so lacking in Noth’s Big.
From New York Times ● Jun. 20, 2023
“Part of being an editor is intuiting what it is that a writer wants or needs from you, and it’s different with every writer,” he says.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 28, 2022
Saito works alone and with obvious joy here, engaging with a ready laugh, intuiting when to let you savor, entertaining any and all questions, slipping into the back sometimes for preparation.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 22, 2022
Reading the way they interact, intuiting the emotions hidden beneath the laughter and conversation, catching the places that gazes linger.
From "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern
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.
