Definitions

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

  • intransitive verb To assume to be true or real for the sake of argument or explanation.
  • intransitive verb To believe, especially on uncertain or tentative grounds.
  • intransitive verb To consider to be probable or likely.
  • intransitive verb To imply as an antecedent condition; presuppose.
  • intransitive verb To consider as a suggestion.
  • intransitive verb To imagine; conjecture.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Supposition; presumption; conjecture; opinion.
  • To infer hypothetically; conceive a state of things, and dwell upon the idea (at least for a moment) with an inclination to believe it true, due to the agreement of its consequences with observed fact, but not free from doubt.
  • To make a hypothesis; formulate a proposition without reference to its being true or false, with a view of tracing out its consequences.
  • To assume as true without reflection; presume; opine; believe.
  • To imply; involve as a further proposition or consequence; proceed from, as from a hypothesis.
  • To put, as one thing by fraud in the place of another.
  • To make or form a supposition; think; imagine.

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

  • noun obsolete Supposition.
  • intransitive verb To make supposition; to think; to be of opinion.
  • transitive verb To represent to one's self, or state to another, not as true or real, but as if so, and with a view to some consequence or application which the reality would involve or admit of; to imagine or admit to exist, for the sake of argument or illustration; to assume to be true; as, let us suppose the earth to be the center of the system, what would be the result?
  • transitive verb To imagine; to believe; to receive as true.
  • transitive verb To require to exist or to be true; to imply by the laws of thought or of nature.
  • transitive verb obsolete To put by fraud in the place of another.

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

  • verb transitive To take for granted; to conclude, with less than absolute supporting data; to believe.
  • verb transitive To theorize or hypothesize.

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

  • verb require as a necessary antecedent or precondition
  • verb express a supposition
  • verb to believe especially on uncertain or tentative grounds
  • verb take for granted or as a given; suppose beforehand
  • verb expect, believe, or suppose

Etymologies

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

[Middle English supposen, from Old French supposer, alteration (influenced by poser, to place) of Medieval Latin suppōnere, from Latin, to put under : sub-, sub- + pōnere, to place; see apo- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

French supposer; prefix sub- under + poser to place; - corresponding in meaning to Latin supponere, suppositum, to put under, to substitute, falsify, counterfeit. See pose.

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Examples

Comments

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  • No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is suppose that they are like himself.

    --John Steinbeck, 1961, The Winter of Our Discontent

    November 22, 2007

  • This is a nice sentence qualifier so you can backtrack later :)

    November 22, 2007