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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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Vocabulary lists containing infer

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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

I wouldn’t, however, infer too much from the outcome in November.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 13, 2026

In this case, limb bones made it possible to identify a new species, infer aspects of its locomotion, investigate its phylogenetic relationships, and expand the known distribution of a rare group of Triassic reptiles.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 10, 2026

“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

“I didn’t understand your reference to the possible destruction of your career. You didn’t mean to infer that this committee was bringing you here because of any effect on your career?”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 18, 2026

The physical and linguistic evidence considered so far has let us infer these prehistoric engulfings, but it still hasn’t solved their mysteries for us.

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

Combining these two, Caballero infers that shift from a safety premium to an absorption premium explains about 0.75 percentage points of the roughly 2.5 percentage point rise in yields since 2015.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 20, 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

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

The large and generalizing mind infers the whole from a single circumstance, and is reproved by all around for its presumptuous judgment.

From Life Without and Life Within or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and poems. by Margaret Fuller

But such a war would be putty in the hands of international judges if they were to adopt a vaguer standard that allows genocidal intent to be inferred “holistically” from “facts and circumstances.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026

“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

The more argon found, the more neutrinos inferred.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan

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

Those include confounding effects of natural variation in additional variables besides the one of interest, as well as problems in inferring chains of causation from observed correlations between variables.

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

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