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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

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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

"This shows that people using static measures such as transcription levels to infer what's happening with autophagy need to be really careful about their interpretations," said Moreno.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 13, 2026

Both Steinbeck and Zoe Kazan infer that something happened to Cathy when she was very young.

From Salon ● Oct. 3, 2026

Location data is any kind of data which can be used to infer a person's location.

From BBC ● Sep. 21, 2026

It can’t infer genocide willy-nilly if there are other reasonable inferences that can be drawn.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026

To imply is to suggest, or to throw out a suggestion; to infer is to conclude, or to take in a suggestion.

From "Woe Is I" by Patricia T. O'Conner

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

Estonia's NLP algorithms break down a request into small segments, identify key words, and from that infers what user wants.

From BBC ● Jul. 8, 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

He reads about this time certain epistles, and infers therefrom that Saul of Tarsus was one of the finest gentlemen that ever lived.

From Satires And Profanities by G. W. (George William) Foote

Neutral rates cannot be directly observed, and instead must be inferred.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 20, 2026

Meink didn’t say, but the range can be inferred from published accounts about the kinds of space-control weapons that Russia or China has launched and tested.

From Slate ● Sep. 17, 2026

Lawyers for Rockstar said there was nothing in the signatures that could identify them as union members, but Oram told the tribunal it could be "inferred" who was by those who handed in the petition.

From BBC ● Sep. 11, 2026

"We found that the inferred acceleration is directed mainly along the direction that we are moving locally, as indicated by the hotspot in the cosmic microwave background, and dies away with distance," explains Professor Sarkar.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 9, 2026

In a landmark paper written in 1897, entitled Hereditary Monstrosities, de Vries analyzed his data and inferred that each trait was governed by a single particle of information.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

This argument would essentially function as a variation on the so-called dormant commerce clause by inferring implied constitutional constraints on states’ sovereign powers.

From Slate ● Sep. 29, 2026

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

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

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