SPECULATIVE • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Speculative

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/spˈɛkjələtɪv/ Listen

adjective

Speculative adj.

Given to speculation; contemplative. "The mind of man being by nature speculative."

Involving, or formed by, speculation; ideal; theoretical; not established by demonstration.

Of or pertaining to vision; also, prying; inquisitive; curious. (R.)

Of or pertaining to speculation in land, goods, shares, etc.; as, a speculative dealer or enterprise. "The speculative merchant exercises no one regular, established, or well-known branch of business."

(Finance) More risky than typical investments; not investment grade.

See images of 'Speculative'

Etymology of 'Speculative'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Speculative" Quotes from Famous Books

... monk, Grishka Otropiev, by others to have been a son of Stephen Bathory, King of Poland. I am not aware that the theory that he was both at one and the same time has ever been put forward, and whilst admitting that it is speculative, yet I claim that no other would appear so aptly to fit all the known facts of his career or to shed light upon ...

— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... Therefore neither lapse of time nor multiplicity of trials could ever quench in Athanasius the pure spirit of hope which glows in his youthful work. Slight as our sketch of it has been, it will be enough to show his combination of religious intensity with a speculative insight and a breadth of view reminding us of Origen. If he fails to reach the mystery of sinlessness in man, and is therefore not quite free from a Sabellianising view of the Lord's humanity as a mere vesture of his divinity, ...

— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin

... drank tea with us at our inn, after which the professors went away; and I, having a letter to write, left my fellow-traveller with Messieurs Foulis. Though good and ingenious men, they had that unsettled speculative mode of conversation which is offensive to a man regularly taught at an English school and university. I found that, instead of listening to the dictates of the Sage, they had teazed him with questions and doubtful disputations. He came in a flutter to me, and desired I ...

— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... another, and Rousseau in a third, just as in the practical order, Lafayette, Danton, Robespierre, represented three different aspirations and as many methods. Rousseau was the most directly revolutionary of all the speculative precursors, and he was the first to apply his mind boldly to those of the social conditions which the revolution is concerned by one solution or another to modify. How far his direct influence was disastrous in consequence of a mischievous method, we shall have to examine. It was so various that ...

— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... one of the later writings of Plato, in which the style has begun to alter, and the dramatic and poetical element has become subordinate to the speculative and philosophical. In the development of abstract thought great advances have been made on the Protagoras or the Phaedrus, and even on the Republic. But there is a corresponding diminution of artistic ...

— Philebus • Plato

More quotes...