Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To look forward to the probable occurrence or appearance of.
  • intransitive verb To consider likely or certain.
  • intransitive verb To consider reasonable or due.
  • intransitive verb To consider obligatory; require.
  • intransitive verb Informal To presume; suppose.
  • intransitive verb To be pregnant. Used in progressive tenses.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To look for; wait for; await
  • To look for with anticipation; believe in the occurrence or the coming of; await as likely to happen or to appear.
  • To reckon upon, as something to be done, granted, or yielded; desire with confidence or assurance: as, to expect obedience or aid; I shall expect to find that job finished by Saturday; you are expected to be quiet.
  • To count upon in relation to something; trust or rely upon to do or act in some specified way; require or call upon expectantly: as, I expect you to obey, or to perform a task.
  • To suppose; reckon; conclude: applied to things past or present as well as to things future: as, I expect he went to town yesterday.
  • To wait; stay.
  • noun Expectation.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb obsolete To wait for; to await.
  • transitive verb To look for (mentally); to look forward to, as to something that is believed to be about to happen or come; to have a previous apprehension of, whether of good or evil; to look for with some confidence; to anticipate; -- often followed by an infinitive, sometimes by a clause (with, or without, that).
  • transitive verb obsolete To wait; to stay.
  • noun obsolete Expectation.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To look for (mentally); to look forward to, as to something that is believed to be about to happen or come; to have a previous apprehension of, whether of good or evil; to look for with some confidence; to anticipate; -- often followed by an infinitive, sometimes by a clause (with, or without, that).
  • verb To consider obligatory or required.
  • verb To consider reasonably due.
  • verb to be pregnant, to consider a baby due
  • verb obsolete To wait for; to await.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb be pregnant with
  • verb regard something as probable or likely
  • verb consider reasonable or due
  • verb look forward to the birth of a child
  • verb look forward to the probable occurrence of
  • verb consider obligatory; request and expect

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin exspectāre : ex-, ex- + spectāre, to look at, frequentative of specere, to see; see spek- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin expectāre, alternative form of exspectō ("look out for, await, expect"), from ex ("out") + spectō ("look at"), frequentative of speciō ("see").

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