Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To infer or estimate by extending or projecting known information.
- v. Mathematics To estimate (a value of a variable outside a known range) from values within a known range by assuming that the estimated value follows logically from the known values.
- v. To engage in the process of extrapolating.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- In mathematics and astronomy, to determine (a value or quantity) by carrying out an empirical formula beyond the limits of the data from which the formula has been deduced. The results are usually more or less doubtful. See interpolate.
Wiktionary
- v. To infer by extending known information.
- v. To estimate the value of a variable outside a known range from values within that range by assuming that the estimated value follows logically from the known ones
WordNet 3.0
- v. estimate the value of
- v. draw from specific cases for more general cases
- v. gain knowledge of (an area not known or experienced) by extrapolating
Etymologies
- extra- + (inter)polate.
Examples
“Sadly, many now extrapolate from the sins of a few bad apples like Enron and Countrywide to blame big companies for America's fall from grace.”
The Huffington Post: Gary Shapiro: The Lesson: Americans Care About Our Future
““The trouble with projections is that they extrapolate from the current reality, and often end up undershooting the mark,” Sunil Paul, a founding partner of Spring Ventures, a firm that invests in cleantech, told me.”
“The creators of Sherlock extrapolate from the solitary, brooding detective we find in the Conan Doyle stories and take Holmes to his logical conclusion.”
“Ross does not try to extrapolate from the behavior of Elizabeth Bennet, Emma Woodhouse and others to modern life.”
“If I extrapolate from the Medicare experience to compute the effect of the overall spread of insurance -- both public and private -- between 1950 and 1990, it suggests that it is responsible for about half of the sixfold growth in real per capita health-care spending during this period.”
Finkelstein on Health Insurance, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“However, let me try to extrapolate from the business of publishing novels.”
“It's hard to extrapolate from a complete absence of evidence.”
“A format that encourages pundits to extrapolate from the latest news item, then, will tend to frequently yield badly wrong conclusions.”
“There is a very strong tendency among people who are healthy," he warned, "to extrapolate from the suffering of others in ways that those who are in fact suffering would not countenance.”
“I really don't think you can extrapolate from the American example.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘extrapolate’.
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Words build meanings from origins( etymology )
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 837 more...
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sentient
think words
wise, witty, smart, brilliant, sentient, extrapolate, imagination, intelligence, polymath, contemplate, calculate, create and 2 more...
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September/October 2011
excogitate, extrapolate, infer, imply, theorize, hypothesize, propose, propound, explicate, elucidate, prognostication, construe and 3 more...
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dameaning's list
negotiable
hegemony
stalagmite
wont
rasp
riddle
somnambulist
librocubicularisttertiary, constancy, acumen, tinder, confluence, insular, partiality, terse, vanguard, avant guard, irrascible, inverse and 27 more...
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Favs
'nuf said
guffaw, pontificate, regalia, appease, sage, epitome, posit, dissipate, delineate, congruent, erroneous, braggadocio and 20 more...
bilby "Counting people tells some interesting things. Especially since computers enable us to extrapolate things into the future. Take this, for example: If the population of the earth were to increase at the present rate indefinitely, by AD 3530 the total mass of human flesh and blood would equal the mass of the earth: and by AD 6826, the total mass of human flesh and blood would equal the mass of the known universe."
- 'All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten', Robert Fulghum. Feb 28, 2008