How to Use surmise in a Sentence

surmise

1 of 2 noun
  • The reason bird genomes are small and streamlined, some experts surmise, has to do with flight.
    — Kate Wong, Scientific American, 1 Nov. 2019
  • Nothing in your life has dissuaded you from these early surmises.
    — Padgett Powell, Harpers Magazine, 30 June 2026
  • The wild surmise of his design sketches beguiled virtually all who saw them.
    — Bill Wyman, New York Times, 6 Mar. 2020
  • From his surmise prov'd false, find peace within, *Favor from Heav'n, our witness from th’ event.
    — Meilan Solly, Smithsonian, 19 Sep. 2019
  • Fans of the original film love to pry into its every nook, with a wild surmise as to Kubrick’s intentions.
    — Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 8 Nov. 2019
  • Stoet and Geary surmise that women in these countries may be choosing careers with the strongest path to financial independence.
    — chicagotribune.com, 19 Apr. 2018
  • His surmise that official Washington is less enamored of his border wall than are the participants at his campaign rallies is correct.
    — James Freeman, WSJ, 29 Jan. 2020
  • Privileged, comfortable people became convinced that this presidency would directly make their lives worse, and this surmise upset them tremendously.
    — Nathaniel Friedman, The New Republic, 21 Oct. 2019
  • Entertaining those that remained into Monday morning, of course, with enough crazy choreography to make any festival-goer surmise that those hand-out sandwiches may well have been dosed.
    — Gary Graff, Billboard, 14 Aug. 2019
  • Though there’s no micro-level evidence on savings rates to check this against, cautions Schmelzing, this surmise is consistent with narrative accounts and research on longer-term wealth evolution.
    — Gwynn Guilford, Quartz, 19 Jan. 2020
  • Ideas formed based on uneducated surmises, particularly those by people with poor knowledge of Islam, can backfire horribly.
    — Kurt Eichenwald, Newsweek, 27 Feb. 2017
  • This attitudinal change was anticipated centuries earlier by Aristotle’s surmise that the curved shadow of a lunar eclipse is that of a spherical Earth.
    — Alan Hirshfeld, WSJ, 11 Aug. 2017
  • When the police and the municipal president — whose 2008 election, many surmise, was bought by the cartels — came with more armed men to release the hostages, the women drove them out too, along with the old political order.
    — Michael Snyder, Los Angeles Times, 7 Oct. 2019
  • Judging by the immediate response of the partisan Tory press this weekend, Johnson is correct in his surmise that what goes on in his personal life remains between him, his girlfriend, and possibly his divorce lawyer.
    — Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker, 23 June 2019
  • To make sense of a correspondence, however complete or incomplete, is to constellate fragmentary evidence, and make surmises about what is missing (including what may not have been apparent to the letter-writers themselves).
    — Langdon Hammer, The New York Review of Books, 25 Feb. 2020
  • His discovery, according to numerous historians who have written books about Nixon and conducted extensive research of his papers, finally provides validation of what had largely been surmise.
    — Peter Baker, Orange County Register, 3 Jan. 2017

surmise

2 of 2 verb
  • We can only surmise what happened.
  • He must have surmised that I was not interested.
  • And if people want to surmise that, great.
    — Max Gao, HollywoodReporter, 14 Nov. 2025
  • For the last three years, fans have surmised that one of the albums would be rock.
    — Brittany Spanos, Rolling Stone, 5 Aug. 2025
  • Cohen surmises that the home was the first on the block.
    — Culture Critic, San Francisco Chronicle, 17 Jan. 2026
  • Some surmised that the killers had come from Sidi Chamarouche.
    — Rachel Monroe, Outside Online, 29 July 2019
  • But easy to surmise that any obstruction case was just made that much harder.
    — Michael Smerconish, Philly.com, 20 June 2018
  • Reporters there surmised that the bear had been around people before.
    — Natalie Dreier, ajc, 3 July 2018
  • Cole’s team surmised that the athletic theme was behind the shift.
    — Naomi Nix, Washington Post, 9 July 2023
  • In that light, Judge Rovner surmised that in some cases a job is just a job.
    — Michael McCann, Sportico.com, 2 July 2026
  • Trainers surmise that scar tissue became impinged in his joint and broke apart.
    — Andrew Baggarly, The Mercury News, 16 June 2017
  • That much can be surmised from people tweeting with shock from the baking aisles of their grocery stores.
    — Chase Purdy, Quartz, 25 Mar. 2020
  • Hoggard surmises that the bottles were meant to act as decoys.
    — Geoff Manaugh, The New Yorker, 31 Oct. 2019
  • If politicians were denied their pay, many surmised, the shutdown would wrap up quickly.
    — Cybele Mayes-Osterman, USA Today, 16 Oct. 2025
  • Owen surmised that Labyrinthodon could have made the tracks of Chirotherium.
    — Hans-Dieter Sues, Smithsonian, 11 Sep. 2019
  • Reddit users surmise that maybe Cheryl was held back a few grades, or Jason skipped some.
    — Carolyn Twersky, Seventeen, 3 May 2019
  • Keltner surmises that an engineer might have made a copy of the session and passed it around.
    — David Gambacorta, Longreads, 25 June 2019
  • The scientists surmise that the size of the etchings mattered.
    — Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, Discover Magazine, 15 June 2022
  • It might be surmised that the mayor and the city have plenty of more important things to be working on.
    — Vahe Gregorian, kansascity, 13 June 2018
  • James, some have surmised, wants to play for coach Gregg Popovich before his legendary run is up.
    — Jeff Zillgitt, USA TODAY, 8 Mar. 2018
  • The only logical next step is to surmise that this product serves someone else.
    — Fouad Khan, Scientific American, 1 Apr. 2021
  • Bouzaid surmised that the valet didn’t realize how powerful a Porsche can be.
    — Natalie Dreier, ajc, 31 May 2018
  • No matter what, let’s surmise that a whole lot of new stock will be created, and that will not be good for the rest of the market.
    — Jim Cramer, CNBC, 5 Apr. 2026
  • The airplane was also above them, possibly in a blind spot, Dani surmised.
    — Emma Hurt, AJC.com, 19 Feb. 2026
  • Seeing Chauvin sent to prison could be a starter, some residents surmise.
    — Joseph Simonson, Washington Examiner, 6 Mar. 2021
  • Police surmised that the drone was not flying at window level and that no pictures had been taken.
    — Thomas Jewell, cleveland.com, 27 Oct. 2017
  • The cynical among us may even surmise that states are doing this to get folks off their medical roles and save money.
    — Angela Helm, The Root, 13 Jan. 2018
  • Center staff surmised the bird had become entangled in fishing line.
    — Jim Higgins, jsonline.com, 9 Aug. 2025
  • Locals surmised that drug gangs were involved in the trade; no one else could afford such expensive equipment.
    — Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker, 4 Nov. 2019
  • This was the first time the pop singer performed the song, which many have surmised to be about her ex-husband, Liam Hemsworth.
    — Chelsey Sanchez, Harper's BAZAAR, 27 Aug. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'surmise.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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