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Speculation   /spˌɛkjəlˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Speculation

noun
1.
A message expressing an opinion based on incomplete evidence.  Synonyms: conjecture, guess, hypothesis, supposition, surmisal, surmise.
2.
A hypothesis that has been formed by speculating or conjecturing (usually with little hard evidence).  Synonym: conjecture.  "He dismissed it as mere conjecture"
3.
An investment that is very risky but could yield great profits.  Synonym: venture.
4.
Continuous and profound contemplation or musing on a subject or series of subjects of a deep or abstruse nature.  Synonym: meditation.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Speculation" Quotes from Famous Books



... committed to a board consisting of five persons who expected to emigrate, and five who were to remain in England. But this part of the engagement appears to have been lost sight of; at least never to have been executed. It is likely that the commercial speculation was soon perceived to be unpromising; and the outlay had been distributed in such proportions that the loss was not burdensome in any quarter. The richer partners submitted to it silently, from public spirit; the poorer, as a less evil than that of a further expense and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... passed a large barque running before the wind—the first ship we had seen since leaving Tahiti—and also a fine whale, blowing, close to us. We could not see the high land in the centre of the island, owing to the mist in which it was enveloped, and there was great excitement and much speculation on board as to the principal points which were visible. At noon the observations taken proved that Tom was right in his opinion as to our exact position. The wind dropped as we approached the coast, where we could ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... and Isabel that their fellow-passengers were so interesting as their fellow passengers used to be in their former days of travel. They were soberly dressed, and were all of a middle-aged sobriety of deportment, from which nothing salient offered itself for conjecture or speculation; and there was little within the car to take their minds from the brilliant young world that flashed and sang by them outside. The belated spring had ripened, with its frequent rains, into the perfection of early summer; the grass was thicker ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the expedition were defrayed partly from the funds of Captain Drake and his officers, partly by moneys subscribed by merchants and others who took shares in the speculation. These were termed adventurers. Ned embarked five hundred pounds of his prize money in the venture, as did ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty

... nothing, and everything will be done,' was the doctrine which he inherited from his great master Lao Tzu. To resolve action into thought, and thought into abstraction, was his wicked transcendental aim. Like the obscure philosopher of early Greek speculation, he believed in the identity of contraries; like Plato, he was an idealist, and had all the idealist's contempt for utilitarian systems; he was a mystic like Dionysius, and Scotus Erigena, and Jacob Bohme, and held, with them and with Philo, that the object of life was to get ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... (in the province of Mazarandan) was the embodied ideal of a Bābī chief such as the primitive period of the faith produced—I mean, that he distinguished himself equally in profound theosophic speculation and in warlike prowess. This combination may seem to us strange, but Mirza Jani assures us that many students who had left cloistered ease for the sake of God and the Bāb developed an unsuspected warlike energy under ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne

... the watch again at the next revolution. The excitement over the behavior of our once despised moon increased rapidly from this time. Nothing else was talked of, business was well-nigh suspended, and the newspapers neglected everything else to tell about the unparalleled natural phenomenon. Speculation was rife as to what would be the end, and what effect would follow a union of the earth with ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... formed the theme of endless speculation at the tavern that evening, and for the moment obscured the general interest ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... not unqualified rebuke. She finally decided to adopt another child for Rose Perpetua's sake; she succeeded in securing a boy, four years old, who was known as Henry—Henry Stover. Her support was assured, for her income was paid to her through a trust company. She had no desire for speculation or for the devious ways of trade. The care of flowers, the nature of children, the ordering of a home were ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... attends poverty; and there could be no objection to arresting that pain. Therefore she, Lady Byron, had lodged in a neighbouring bank the sum of one hundred pounds, to be used for benevolent purposes; and, in order to preclude all outside speculation, she had made the money payable to the order of the intermediate person, so that the sufferer's name need not appear ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... of opinion among scholars and critics concerning the meaning of the various scenes in these sculptures; and as all their writing is speculation, and no one knows the truth about it, I shall only say that it is a very interesting object in the history of art, and shall speak of the four corner figures on the shortest parts of the frieze, from which the whole work ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... Earth made a landing on Venus, there was much speculation about what might be found beneath the cloud layers obscuring that planet's surface from the ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse

... light,—the methods of transacting the business of the Bureau were faulty; several cases of defalcation were proved, and other frauds strongly suspected; there were some business transactions which savored of dangerous speculation, if not dishonesty; and around it all lay the smirch of ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... ease. The master of a second-rate intermediate school heard of the boy's ability. Being anxious to earn the fees which a generous government gives to the masters of clever boys, this man offered to continue Gideon's education without asking payment from Ebenezer. The speculation turned out well. Gideon did more than was expected of him. He won all the exhibitions, medals and prizes possible under the Irish Intermediate system. At last he won a mathematical ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham

... the lesson of this but that Christianity consists rather in the affections than in the intellect; that it is a life rather than a creed; and that they who diverge the widest from each other in speculation upon its doctrines may, after all, be found working side by side on the common ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... would have induced the attorney and his companion to relinquish their pursuit but for two circumstances. They had both undertaken the job as a speculation, or on the principle of "no play, no pay," and all their trouble would be lost without success. Then the very difficulty that occurred had been foreseen, and while the officer proceeded to the ship, the uncle had been busily searching for a son on shore, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... experience in all sorts of speculation. When old he gave this counsel to one of his proteges: "Do not speculate. I have always speculated on assured information, and that has cost me so many millions;" and he named his losses. We may believe that in this reckoning he rather forgot the amount ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... G. Barnard, Charleston, S. C., to be sold, proceeds to be remitted to me, in Montgomery. The cotton was sold and the amount forwarded to me in two drafts on New York, one of which I had cashed in that city, and the other in Montgomery. I lost quite a sum by my speculation, as cotton did not rise, but fell. I was perfectly contented to stand the loss, as the stolen money was exchanged. I bought "Yankee Mary" with the two thousand five hundred dollars remaining, and returned to Montgomery, ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton

... Brunswick speculation, or turning on the Mecklenburg or Eisenach or any other in its stead, the Correspondence naturally avails nothing. Seckendorf has his orders from Vienna: Grumkow has his pension,—his cream-bowl duly set,—for helping Beckendorf. Though angels pleaded, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... association that led to its being formed, and that was further cemented by its formation: "Willingly do I recall and linger upon these days and months, extending even to years, in which common studies of this abstract nature bound us together. It was the romance—the poetry—of speculation and friendship. All the vexed questions of the schools were attempted by our united strength, after our higher guide had set the example. The thorny wilds of logic were pleasant as an enchanted ground; its driest technicalities treasured up as unspeakably rare and precious. ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns

... threatened devastation will not be consummated in my day. Although the adventurous spirit of times short while since passed gave rise to the undertaking, I have been encouraged to think, that the subsequent changes have so far damped the spirit of speculation, that the rest of the woodland footpath leading to Aunt Margaret's retreat will be left undisturbed for her time and mine. I am interested in this, for every step of the way, after I have passed through the green already mentioned, has for me something of early remembrance ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... especially to missionaries who have given themselves to the regeneration of India. It will give them a larger degree of respect for that great people of the East and a new appreciation for Hindu thought and religious speculation. We of the West have been imbued with too much of an intellectual arrogance and a spirit of contempt for "the benighted Hindu." Even if we ever learned, we certainly have too easily forgotten, that many, many centuries ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... understand, therefore, that, in spite of the fever, there was a sense of satisfaction in the feeling that he was surrounded with the trophies of his arduous labours as a naturalist, and this passion for species and their descriptions being an ever-present speculation in his mind, his very surroundings would unconsciously conduce towards the line of thought which brought to memory the argument of "positive checks" set forth by Malthus in his "Principles of Population" (read twelve years ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... also free to reflect upon his own personal shortcomings, a speculation perhaps less damaging than the recent one he had indulged in; and he thought about it sometimes; and sometimes about Ailsa Paige, whom he had not again seen since the unaccountable madness had driven him to trample and destroy ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... Beatrice cried, "you are not serious. No, you wouldn't, you couldn't be so foolish. That's no affair of yours. That's not your country. Besides, that is not war; it is speculation. You are a gentleman, not ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis

... Requa, braved the perils of the Tappan Sea. Alas! Gabriel and the "Farmer's Daughter" slept in peace. Two steamboats now splashed and paddled up daily to the little rural port of Tarrytown. The spirit of speculation and improvement had seized even upon that once quiet and unambitious little dorp. The whole neighborhood was laid out into town lots. Instead of the little tavern below the hill, where the farmers used to loiter on market days and indulge in cider and gingerbread, an ambitious hotel, with ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... peaceful occupations and ruined their minor undertakings, the same passions which made them attach so much importance to the maintenance of peace will be turned to arms. War, after it has destroyed all modes of speculation, becomes itself the great and sole speculation, to which all the ardent and ambitious desires which equality engenders are exclusively directed. Hence it is that the selfsame democratic nations which are so reluctant to engage in hostilities, sometimes ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... might create impatience of his lot; and if he ever wondered whether a long succession of ignorant and sensual blacks were to be driven into the field by the whip every day in Saint Domingo, for evermore, he had cut short the speculation as inconsistent with his stoical habit of endurance, and his Christian principle of trust. It was not till his youth was past that he had learned anything of the revolutions of the world—too late to bring them into his speculations and his hopes. He had read, from year to year, of ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... homesteaded one hundred and sixty acres of government land in Dry Hollow. That was a subject for a two days' gossip in the town. There was speculation about what she wanted with a dry ravine in the hills, and many shook their heads in condemnation. However, it set some to thinking and moved one man, at least, to action. Jed Bolton, the same day that he heard of it, rode ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson

... hot winds has given rise to much speculation. . . . The favourite theory is that they are generated in the sandy plains of the interior, which becoming powerfully heated, pour their glowing breath upon the fertile regions of ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... them, but with no speculation; the next moment she looked in the same way upon the belongings of the little country depot—the battered yellow settees, the time-tables, the long stove in its tract of littered sawdust, the man's face in the window of ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... anyone was to be seen without a town-site map in his hands, the advantages and beauties of which fictitious metropolis he was ready to present in the most eloquent terms. Everything useful was neglected, and speculation was rampant. There were no banks of issue, and all the money that was in the country was borrowed in the East. In order to make borrowing easy, the law placed no restrictions on the rate of interest, and the usual terms were ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... in Africa on the assassination of the King of Timbuctoo? Have two centuries of education nothing to do with our success, or an eternity of ignorance with Mexican failure? Was our government a lucky guess, and theirs an unfortunate speculation? The one lesson that America is destined to teach the world, or to miss her destiny in failing to teach, has with us passed into a truism, and is yet continually lost sight of; it is the magnificent result ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... mine owner or a soldier. He has his men to keep in hand, to win their confidence, and make them follow him, and to set them a good example, Gwyn. But I can't say anything for certain. It's all a speculation, and I never shut my eyes to the fact that it may turn out a failure. If it does, we can go back ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... known in a general way from its fur being used as part of the insignia of royalty. The fur however only becomes valuable after it has completed its winter change. How this is done was for a long time a subject of speculation and inquiry. It is, however, now proved that it is according to season that the mode of alteration is effected. In spring the new hairs are brown, replacing the white ones of winter; in autumn the existing brown hairs turn white. Mr. Bell, who gave the subject his careful consideration, says that ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... important function of introducing and disseminating speculative philosophy, we shall find them again, five hundred years later, occupied with a similar task on the advent of that period in which philosophical speculation was about to be supplanted by religious faith. For there can be no doubt that, humanly speaking, the cause of the rapid propagation of Christianity, in its first ages, lay in the extraordinary facilities existing among the commercial communities scattered all around the shores of the ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... Pythagoreans—unity is the perfect principle of creation! Seriously, how can you mistake the principles of opinion for the principles of conduct? I am a Benthamite, a benevolist, as a logician—but the moment I leave the closet for the world, I lay aside speculation for others, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... life is not dependent on the theories of philosophers: we know what our duties are for the most part before we speculate about them. And the use of speculation is not to teach us what we already know, but to inspire in our minds an interest about morals in general, to strengthen our conception of the virtues by showing that they confirm one another, to prove to us, as Socrates would have said, that they are not many, but one. There is ...
— Philebus • Plato

... pantomime courtiers, whose big heads he knocks together, whom he pokes with his pantomime sceptre, whom he orders to prison under the guard of his pantomime beefeaters, as he sits down to dine on his pantomime pudding? It is grave, it is sad, it is theme most curious for moral and political speculation; it is monstrous, grotesque, laughable, with its prodigious littlenesses, etiquettes, ceremonials, sham moralities; it is as serious as a sermon, and as absurd and outrageous ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... was sent out, E. S. Rogers, Fig. 49, Salem, Massachusetts, and J. H. Ricketts, Newburgh, New York, began to give viticulturists hybrids of the European Vinifera and the American species which were so promising that enthusiasm and speculation in grape-growing ran riot. Never before nor since has grape-growing received the attention in America as given during the introduction of Rogers' hybrids. It was the expectation of all that we were to grow in America, in these hybrids, grapes but little inferior, if at ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... read variously and enjoyed philosophical speculation. 'Supposing that by just taking thought, by just wishing it, an Englishman could kill a mandarin in China and make himself rich for life, without anybody knowing anything about it! How many mandarins do you suppose there would be left in China ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... that we want to buy the land on a speculation?" said George, with a smile. "There may be oil there, and we may want to sink ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis

... delight, but the cuckoo has to work hard for the privilege, and it must at times be harried to the verge of desperation by the small birds that continually mob it in broad daylight. This behaviour on the part of its pertinacious little neighbours has been the occasion of much futile speculation; but the one certain result of such persecution is to make the cuckoo, along with its fellow-sufferer, the owls, preferably active in the sweet peace of the gloaming, when its puny tyrants are gone to roost. Much heated argument has raged round the real or supposed sentiment that inspires ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo

... steadfast; a large, heavy, parrot-like beak hung before the eyes, and worked and wobbled, and seemed to beckon. But what froze one's heart was the expression of the eyes, so stony and lugubrious, so passionless, so devoid of speculation, yet so fixed of purpose and ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... a good speculation," said Amarendra Babu musingly, "but I should like to have further particulars. What do you expect to make per head delivered; and what capital will be required?" Jogesh pulled out a paper covered with ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea

... time Cora held the lead in her boat, with the other following in her wake. The girls talked among themselves, speculation being rife as to what the young man wanted ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose

... race the inhabitants of Ceylon at that time belonged, and whence or at what period the island was originally peopled, the Buddhist chronicles furnish no reply. And no memorials of the aborigines themselves, no monuments or inscriptions, now remain to afford ground for speculation. Conjectures have been hazarded, based on no sufficient data, that the Malayan type, which extends from Polynesia to Madagascar, and from Chin-India to Taheite, may still be traced in the configuration, and in some of the immemorial customs, of the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... Idolized by the Jacobites, beloved by some of the Whigs, a "model of ancient simplicity, manliness and honour,"[235] the accession of Hepburn to the Jacobite cause was lamented by those who esteemed him, and who saw in his notions of the independence of Scotland only a visionary speculation. ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... his own eyes; conscience, reason, self-respect, interest, call upon him to fight against it and destroy it. From high play at cards to gambling on the Bourse there is but a step. Cavour embarked in a speculation the success of which depended on the outbreak of war in the East, which he believed to be imminent. No war occurred, and the loss of a few hundred pounds obliged him to apply to his father for supplies. The Marquis sent the money, and wrote good-naturedly ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... looked up to for his superior caution and sagacity. He was continually congratulated upon it. "Savings-banks are good enough for me," he kept repeating. But that was four years ago, and now his turn had come; the contagion of speculation had struck him at last. That was the way with ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... with an impulse of true faith which made my heart thrill—'Ah, sir, if men believed more, they would do wonders, and the word of Our Lord never fails, and He has said that the more one gives the more they receive, for charity never makes any one poor; only we must give without distrust, and without speculation.' ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... Green, was enough to rouse a little curiosity. And when presently the bodyguard, after sundry whispered communications, increased from two to nine, who marched three in front, two behind, and two on either side of their celebrity, speculation became active and warm. ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed

... come call'd Charitie, the soul Of all the rest: then wilt thou not be loath To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess A Paradise within thee, happier farr. Let us descend now therefore from this top Of Speculation; for the hour precise Exacts our parting hence; and see the Guards, By mee encampt on yonder Hill, expect 590 Thir motion, at whose Front a flaming Sword, In signal of remove, waves fiercely round; We may no longer stay: go, waken Eve; Her also I with gentle Dreams have calm'd Portending good, and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... Tarbox, rather abashed. "I am, of course, ready to give you advice, and my first advice is to seek a lawyer and let him institute a suit against your stepfather, on speculation. That is, he gets nothing if he fails, but obtains a commission if he succeeds. I could myself recommend a ...
— Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... Indian deserts, where they founded Tannote, Derawal and Jaisalmer, the last in A.D. 1157. It has been suggested in the main article on Rajput that the Yadus might have been the Sakas, who invaded India in the second century A.D. This is only a speculation. At a later date a Yadava kingdom existed in the Deccan, with its capital at Deogiri or Daulatabad and its territory lying between that place and Nasik. [582] Mr. Smith states that these Yadava kings were descendants of feudatory nobles of the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... hear him speak of anything, and presently there came out of the unexpected region of his thought the thing I had been waiting for. He called my attention to the fact that in every generation all sorts of speculation and thinking tend to fall under the formula of the dominant thought of the age. For example, after the Newtonian Theory of the universe had been developed, almost all thinking tended to express itself in the analogies of the Newtonian Theory, and since the Darwinian Theory has reigned amongst ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson

... conceded Garcia. "I shall have need of money presently. That journey was a great cost—a terribly bad speculation," he went on, shaking his mottled, bluish head wofully. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... Council of Upper Canada. The former gentleman was an enterprising Scotchman who had settled in Niagara while it was yet known as Newark, where he had first kept a general store, and afterwards practised law and speculation with great pecuniary success. Like the Jarvis above mentioned, he was disfigured by a red right hand, having shot his man in a duel fought in the autumn of 1808 behind the United States fort on the opposite bank of the river. It is fair to Mr. Dickson, however, to say that ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... no scientific evidence whatsoever of the existence of such a third entity, "X," but all our deductions have been by analogy, which proves nothing—that is, by speculation, dreaming, and unavoidably so—since in these conceptions we are close to the border line of the human mind where logical reasoning loses itself in the fog of contradiction. But at the same time there is no evidence against the conception ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent

... some photographic artists were allowed to come over and take our portraits in a group. I think it proved a profitable speculation, for the sale was quite large. One of the party proved afterward to be a lieutenant of a Charleston company. It seems he came as a spy, and, no doubt, thought he had done a very clever thing; but inasmuch as Mr. Gourdin and other Secessionists, including several military and naval officers, were ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday

... appreciate the great danger of too much attention to abstract speculation or metaphysical reasoning in political affairs, I cannot but perceive that there are times and circumstances when it is not only proper but absolutely necessary to appeal to principles somewhat general and abstract, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... He had at once hit on a fact which those Wilchester folk of thirty years ago had never suspected. It had been said at the time that the two offenders had lost the building society's money in gambling and speculation, and there had been grounds for such a belief. But that was not so. Most of the money had been skilfully and carefully put where the two conspirators could lay hands on it as soon as it was wanted, and when the term of imprisonment ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher

... his images and illustrations from a more extensive circumference of science. Dryden knew more of man in his general nature, and Pope in his local manners. The notions of Dryden were formed by comprehensive speculation, and those of Pope by minute attention. There is more dignity in the knowledge of Dryden, and more certainty in that of Pope. Poetry was not the sole praise of either; for both excelled likewise in prose; but Pope did not borrow his prose from his predecessor. The style of Dryden is capricious and ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson

... are commonly misconstrued, for it is written: "They parted my raiment among 242:24 them, and for my vesture they did cast lots." The divine Science of man is woven into one web of consistency without seam or rent. Mere speculation or 242:27 superstition appropriates no part of the divine vesture, while inspiration restores every part of the ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... withstand the threatened attack of the Spaniards. Lord Cochrane had to encounter troubles from the outset. Among the Chilian fleet was the Hecate, an eighteen-gun sloop that had been sold out of the British navy, and purchased by two men, Captains Guise and Spry, as a speculation. They at first attempted to sell her at Buenos Ayres, but, failing to do so, had brought her on to Chili, where the government had bought the ship, and had appointed them to command her. They, and an American captain named Worcester, had obtained ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty

... a doubtful moment. "Yes, I'll sell out to-morrow, Nevitt," he said, after a struggle, "or what comes to the same thing, you can sell out for me. But, do you know, my dear fellow, I sometimes fancy I'm a fool for my pains, going in for all this silly speculation. Better stick to my guinea a column in the Morning Mail. The risks are so great, and the gains so small. I don't believe outsiders ought to back their luck at all like this on ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen

... strong for Law; but it was becoming daily more impossible. Madrigals, dramas (not without actresses), satirical wit, airy verse, and all manner of adventurous speculation, were what this young man went upon; and was getting more and more loved for; introduced, even, to the superior circles, and recognized there as one of the brightest young fellows ever seen. Which tended, of course, to confirm him ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle

... therefore evident that the selling of futures may be a transaction the sole purpose of which is to eliminate speculation ...
— About sugar buying for Jobbers - How you can lessen business risks by trading in refined sugar futures • B. W. Dyer

... to strike with an invisible hand all who are lost to the sense of right and justice. In Frye's case the avenging goddess lurked in his inordinate belief in his own shrewdness, coupled with a fatuous love of speculation. A few lucky ventures at first in the stock market had fanned the flame until he believed he was as invincible in State Street as he was in ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn

... nations have you seen in your travels, good sir?" asked Alleyne Edricson. His young mind hungered for plain facts of life, after the long course of speculation and of mysticism on which ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... SENTIMENT produces dishonesty. A public sentiment, in which dishonesty is not disgraceful; in which bad men are respectable, are trusted, are honored, are exalted—is a curse to the young. The fever of speculation, the universal derangement of business, the growing laxness of morals, is, to an alarming extent, introducing such a state of things. Men of notorious immorality, whose dishonesty is flagrant, whose private habits would disgrace the ditch, are powerful and popular. I have seen a man stained with ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher

... said that this entire universe is identical with that one Purusha of superior attributes. I shall explain this now, after bowing to my preceptor Vyasa, that foremost of Rishis, who is conversant with the soul, endued with penances, self-restrained, and worthy of reverent worship. This speculation on Purusha, O king, occurs in all the Vedas. It is well known to be identical with Rita and Truth. The foremost of Rishis, viz., Vyasa, has thought upon it. Having occupied themselves with reflection on what is called ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... whole bundles of goose-quills tremble. Paris society is made up not even chiefly of Parisians; the rich of all nations flock to us, and are content to pay a few hundred pounds per month for a floor of glass and gilding. The Emperor has made a show capital as a speculation. All Europe contributes to the grandeur of the fashionable world of Paris. And ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold

... preceded the bursting of the volcano. It followed, after statesmen had, one after another, seen the elements of that disruption. The probability of the severance of the North and South has been a speculation to which the older of us have long been familiar. And now [1864] who would venture to predict the time of the close of that sad war? (First edition.) Now [1865] that it has come to an end Americans taunt Europeans ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... beginning of the Hudson's Bay Company. Having spent a winter at Fort Charles, the first fort on the Bay, so named after the royal patron, the adventurers returned to England in 1670 with such solid proofs of the soundness of the speculation, that the new Company received a charter from the King under the title of "The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England, Trading into Hudson's Bay." The Company were constituted lords and proprietors ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... where there was a fair, and where he had a very narrow escape. A little more, we are told, and a hideous, snuffy, old Icelandic woman would have kissed him. In respect to the survey, the mass of workable material was enormous. There was no lack of sulphur, and the speculation promised to be a remunerative one. Eventually, however, it was found that the obstacles were insuperable, and the scheme had to be abandoned. However, the trip had completed the cure commenced by Camoens, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... which had been rejected in the last session; and it was supported by a considerable number of members, animated with a true spirit of patriotism: but to the trading part of the nation it appeared one of those plausible projects, which, though agreeable in speculation, can never be reduced into practice, without a concomitancy of greater evils than those they were intended to remove. While the bill remained under the consideration of the house, petitions were presented ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... He had been otherwise interested in St. Andrews, during the years 1846-51, when associated with Sir John Gladstone (father of the Premier) in a scheme for developing that town as a bathing-place, building houses, &c. This, however, was a speculation on which it would he needless to enlarge, even if I had the details. In a letter to Miss Hope- Scott (May 25, 1867) he observes, 'St. Andrews is the best sea quarter in Scotland, I believe (and you know I have property there, which proves it).'] must also be named as either created or largely assisted ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby

... well regulated penitentiary houses seem, in speculation, to afford the fairest opportunity; and a plan of this kind, formed by the united efforts of Judge Blackstone, Mr. Eden, and Mr. Howard, was adopted by Parliament in the year 1779. Difficulties however occurred which prevented the execution of this design: a circumstance which will be something ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip

... Fluette was not only a collector of gems, but his collection was and still is one of the most famous in the world. Perhaps Page was willing to sacrifice a fortune merely to thwart a rival's ambition; perhaps he was only satisfying some old grudge about which the world knew nothing—it was all speculation, and speculation of a most unsatisfying sort, too. He got the stone, at any rate; and here we have another instance of the ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk

... never to offer propositions or advice that we are certain will not be entertained. Discourses so much out of the road could not avail anything, nor have any effect on men whose minds were prepossessed with different sentiments. This philosophical way of speculation is not unpleasant among friends in a free conversation; but there is no room for it in the courts of princes, where great affairs are carried on by authority." "That is what I was saying," replied he, "that there is ...
— Utopia • Thomas More

... position made me wonder if Jervaise's soul also hesitated between some gloomy prison of conventional success and the freedom of beautiful desires. I could find no words, however, to press that speculation and instead I attempted, rather nervously, to point the way towards what I regarded as the natural solution of the immediate problem. "Come," I said, "the idea of a marriage between Banks and your sister doesn't appear so unreasonable. The Bankses ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... more amiable, and far superior in true elevation of character. She was full of theories and loved to air them, hence the people who move across the pages of her novels are often lost in a cloud of speculation. But she gave a fresh impulse to literature, adding a fine quality of grace, tenderness, and pure though often exaggerated sentiment. Mme. de La Fayette, who had more clearness of mind as well as a finer artistic sense, gave a better form to the novel and ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... the fine words, "trafficking in men by men, speculation on hunger, monopoly," they began to blacken commerce, and to cast a veil ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat

... even speculation, meditations, and whatever things can be performed by the exertions of the soul itself, are of no profit. One thing, and one alone, is necessary for life, justification, and Christian liberty; and that is the most holy word of ...
— Concerning Christian Liberty - With Letter Of Martin Luther To Pope Leo X. • Martin Luther

... require mothers to accompany their daughters to such functions, but allowed them to go unattended, Mrs. Allison preferred to remain at home. To what splendor and gayety the affair would lend itself was a matter of much speculation. This was the Governor's first event, and no one was aware of his ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... moral of the Pelican. She digs a bill into her dearest, and then she's sorry. At the best of her argument she's always owing her opponent an apology for some offence against manners. She has no savoir-faire." Here Brother Copas, relapsing, let the cloud of speculation drift between him and Brother Warboise's remorse. "Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus—I reverence the pluck of a man who can cut himself loose from all that; for the worst loss he has to face (if he only knew it) is the inevitable ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... her in silent speculation. Then one little fat hand reached out and pushed her. She rolled over and buried her wet face in the dusty ground and howled heart-brokenly. Then Jamie crawled close up beside her, and, stretching himself out, wept his sympathy into the ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... going begging; worth nothing a year, encumbered up to the eyes, and loaded with first rent-charges, jointures, settlements. Money, indeed! poor Kynaston! It's my brother Marmaduke's I mean; lucky dog, he went in for speculation—began life as a guinea-pig, and rose with the rise of soap and cocoa. ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... in the text, were occasioned by a London bookseller having printed, as a Speculation, an additional collection of Tales of My Landlord, which was not so fortunate as to succeed in passing on the world ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... man in astonishment, for she had never treated a death as a speculation, and she hesitated, tempted by the idea of the possible gain, but she suspected that he wanted to play her a trick. "I can say nothing until I have seen ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... favour, it struck Lady Abergavenny, a niece of Archbishop Arundel, who was a politic woman—as most of his nieces were—that an alliance between her son and Isabel Le Despenser would be a good speculation. And her Ladyship, being moreover a strong-minded woman, whose husband was of very little public and less private consequence, carried her point, and the marriage of Isabel with young Richard Beauchamp ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... its workmen was vigorously challenged in language which had little resemblance to the harangues which led to Tarte's undoing six years later. From this he went on to speak of Laurier's qualities and the amazing ignorance of them shown even by his intimates of his own race. There had been much speculation in Montreal as to who should be the new high commissioner for Canada in London. Sir Donald A. Smith, who had been appointed in the last weeks of Conservative rule, would be, it was assumed, dismissed. Tarte scouted the idea that Smith would be disturbed. Laurier was not that kind of a man. ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe

... figure, encased in an ill-fitting suit of coarse cloth, was stooped and shrunken; his face was deeply lined; yet he was not an old man in years. He was only forty; he was thirty when he had been convicted of embezzling the bank funds for purposes of speculation and had been sent to prison, leaving behind a wife and father who were broken-hearted and a sister whose pride had suffered ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... and hurt. Love is a thing for lovers only. It must not be approached by the sacrilegious scientist. Let him keep to his physics and chemistry, things definite and solid and gross. Love is for ardent speculation, not laboratory analysis. Love is (as the reverend prior and the learned bodies told brother Lippo ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London

... to find himself in another and more beautiful world. Looking around him with a childlike wonder, he rose and made his way back to the cabin. He listened at the door, but heard no sound. He entered, found the room empty, and gave himself up to rude and unscientific speculation as to the nature of this mysterious adventure. Nothing helped to solve the problem, until at last he discovered the Bible, which the Quaker had hurled at the snake, lying upon the hearthstone. It did not explain everything, but it served to connect the inexplicable ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... Marsh over in evident speculation. The man was tall and broad shouldered. His face was clean shaven. The features were strong, with a regularity that many people would consider handsome. He was what one would call a big man, but ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne

... to shake off gloomy speculation, uneasily aware that much of the carefree confidence of the last hour had deserted him. In a more normal state of mind again he became prey to tension once more, a pounding heart and dry mouth recalling mercilessly the essential frailties of his kind. So, ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor

... sewing, she found time to read a number of books, and we argued about these. Then, too, she had been probing her young doctor, and had made interesting discoveries about him. For one thing, he was full of awe and admiration for her; and her awakening mind found material for speculation in ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... estate is now looking better than you have ever seen it." But all the old estates in Mysore that were planted in the proper coffee zone are in existence now, and many of them look better than they ever did. The durability of coffee property in Mysore, then, is, as we have seen, not a subject of speculation, but an ascertained fact, and I now proceed to show that it is as profitable as it ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... that Peter Kelly, being one of the "snuggest" men in the neighborhood, would be a likely person to join him in a "spec," as he called it (a favorite abbreviation of his for the word "speculation"), and accordingly, when he reached the "big-farm house," he accosted the owner with ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various

... undoubtedly habitable by beings like ourselves, but, as may be supposed, I was not in a mood to be satisfied with considering it merely habitable. I allowed no sort of question that it was inhabited. What manner of beings these inhabitants might be I found a fascinating speculation. The variety of types appearing in mankind even on this small Earth makes it most presumptuous to assume that the denizens of different planets may not be characterized by diversities far profounder. Wherein such diversities, coupled with a general resemblance to man, might consist, whether in ...
— The Blindman's World - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... vision and their work have been very difficult for me to identify positively. Until clearer light on the matter is received, I choose to withhold an explanation rather than to indulge in speculation. Its usual explanation is to apply the gathering of the harvest of the earth to the work of the reformation now taking place and the vintage scene to the final destruction of the wicked, their punishment being symbolized by the treading of the "winepress of the wrath of God." This may ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... put me in prison, at Clichy! Bad speculation, I warn you, my practice will be lost, and, you know, no ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau

... money panic. Nearly all the specie had been shipped abroad, and large sums of paper money had been issued, much of it on credit of a questionable nature. The general commercial expansion following the war had led to extensive speculation all over the country. When the new United States Bank suddenly began a vicious and relentless campaign against all other banks of issue in an ill-advised effort to force them immediately to a specie basis, loans were called in everywhere, the circulation was greatly contracted, ...
— Outline of the development of the internal commerce of the United States - 1789-1900 • T.W. van Mettre

... Since there was no proof as to what caused the strange predark manifestation, and because even expert witnesses were unable to explain the appearance, the matter remains a subject for interesting speculation. ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe

... try to appeal to any sense of fairness in this man. Pan saw that and his passionate eloquence died in his throat. Coldly he eyed Hardman and then the greasy dust-caked face of Purcell. He could catch only the steely speculation in Purcell's evil eyes. He read there that, if the man had possessed the nerve, he would have drawn on him at ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey

... "how things seem to fall into place." Scanlon saw the light of speculation in the singular eyes, but made no comment. A little later the investigator went on: "That you should have this rather extraordinary experience of yours with ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre

... many lodging-houses in Hadleigh now; it would be a hazardous speculation, and one likely to fail; they had not sufficient furniture for such a purpose, and they dare not use up their little capital too quickly. They were too young, too, to carry out such a thing, Nan did not add "and too pretty," though she colored and hesitated here. Their mother could not ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... the everlasting regions; and, indeed, the idea that animals possess actually an inferior soul, and that, maltreated as they are on earth, they too have their appropriate heaven, has by many been considered a speculation less ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various

... the faintest gleam of recognition! It was as though I looked at two diamonds, which returned my stare unwinkingly and unseeingly. I managed to make myself thoroughly miserable—pale and thin with anxiety and self-reproach I let this man, and the speculation concerning him, take up my whole thoughts, and I kept silence, because I dreaded so intensely lest any question should bring out the truth. I smiled drearily when I thought that there certainly was ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill

... as grieved, deeply grieved; and I must confess that I can only account for the deplorable confusion and loss by the theory that I suggested to you the other day. I cannot but think that your poor father must have engaged in some disastrous speculation." ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... machines. Many improvements have been made by the ingenuity of the makers of the machines, when to make them became the business of a peculiar trade; and some by that of those who are called philosophers, or men of speculation, whose trade it is not to do any thing, but to observe every thing, and who, upon that account, are often capable of combining together the powers of the most distant and dissimilar objects in the progress ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... the obituary notice which I have been quoting, quite by chance, along with a great many others of the same period. It had excited some little speculation in my mind, but, beyond thinking that, if I ever had an opportunity of examining the local records of the period indicated, I would try to remember Dr Haynes, I made no effort to pursue ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James

... would be found to be of a very novel and convincing character. The assertion of the prisoner's lawyer at the police-court, to the effect that the answer to the charge was such that it could not yet be given, but would be available before the Assizes, also caused much speculation. A final touch was given to the curiosity of the public when it was learned that the prisoner had refused all offers of legal assistance from counsel and was determined to conduct his own defence. The case for the Crown was ably presented, ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... poseian otra cosa." Ondegardo, Rel. Prim., Ms.] But this is the dark side of the picture. If no man could become rich in Peru, no man could become poor. No spendthrift could waste his substance in riotous luxury. No adventurous schemer could impoverish his family by the spirit of speculation. The law was constantly directed to enforce a steady industry and a sober management of his affairs. No mendicant was tolerated in Peru. When a man was reduced by poverty or misfortune, (it could hardly be by fault,) the arm of the law was stretched out to minister relief; not ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... on the polished desk, and regarded her with a sort of impersonal speculation. A little smile ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... ships, whalemen and others, visited the port for supplies, and for the purpose of a little private speculation, with which the custom-house was not troubled. Dame Juanita's shop, being rather the largest in St. Blas, and possessing, moreover, the additional attraction of her own buxom countenance, and that of a pretty daughter behind the counter, was visited daily by the ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... sun-rise smells decidedly of the taper. Even ourself, in these our humbler lucubrations, tune our best measured cadences (Prose has her cadences) not unfrequently to the charm of the drowsier watchman, "blessing the doors;" or the wild sweep of winds at midnight. Even now a loftier speculation than we have yet attempted, courts our endeavours. We would indite something about the Solar System.—Betty, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... the acuter minds of a hundred years ago, were present to the acuter minds who lived hundreds of years before that. The more deeply we penetrate into the history of opinion, the more strongly are we tempted to believe that in the great matters of speculation no question is altogether new, and hardly any answer is altogether new. But the Church had known how to deal with intellectual insurgents, from Abelard in the twelfth century down to Giordano Bruno and Vanini ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... question what value to attach to the speculations which Wislicenus has brought to our notice, it is difficult to give any but a general answer. No one can well have a greater fear of mere speculation, which is indulged in independently of the facts, than the writer of this notice. Great harm has been done chemistry, and probably every other branch of knowledge, by unwarranted speculation, and every one who has looked into the matter knows how ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various

... at least, to give democracy any standing-ground for an argument with despotism or oligarchy, a majority of the men composing it should be statesmen and thinkers. It is a proverb, that to turn a radical into a conservative there needs only to put him into office, because then the license of speculation or sentiment is limited by a sense of responsibility; then for the first time he becomes capable of that comparative view which sees principles and measures, not in the narrow abstract, but in the full ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... grades of social progress, but we also find the All Father belief. I am ready, of course, to believe that good conditions of life beget progress, social and religious, as a general rule. But other causes exist; speculation anywhere may take crudely scientific rather than crudely religious lines. Especially the belief in ancestral spirits may check or nullify the belief in a remote All Father. We see this among the Zulus, where spirits entirely dominate ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker

... impending release, her daughters were quite unaware of them was evidence of the Madam's complete sovereignty over her realm. It would have been a brave man or woman who dared to gossip of Mrs. Kildare's affairs with her children. They remained unconscious of the undercurrent of excitement and speculation in the atmosphere about them. In time, mention of the pardon and reference to the old-time scandal it revived, was made in the newspapers; but these papers failed to reach the reading-table at Storm, and the girls did not miss them. ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... locomotive would soon be heard in every corner of the state, and that the dealer in town lots and broad acres would again be able to complacently inform the newcomer the exact locality where a few dollars would soon bring to the investor returns unheard of by any ordinary methods of speculation. The campaign was short and the amendment carried by an immense majority. So nearly unanimous was the sentiment of the community in favor of the measure that it was extremely hazardous for any one to express sentiments In opposition to it. The city of St. Paul, with a population ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore

... of my joining the Settlers' Club in 1856. The rage for land speculation was sweeping over Iowa like a prairie fire, getting things all ready for the great panic of 1857 that I have read of since, but of which I never heard until long after it was over. All I knew was that there was a great fever for buying and ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick

... marriage cannot be any thing else but a barefaced speculation. Your father is immensely rich; ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... they did not intend to surrender the glory which was reflected from the champion whom they had created. Nor even in the circles of the governing class could this controversy be for the moment more than a matter for idle or malicious speculation. Hard fighting had to be done against the barbarians of the north, a reorganisation of the army was essential, and for both these purposes even they admitted that Marius was the necessary man. Even the ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... of covetousness. [Luke 12:15] The love of money is a root of all evil. [I Tim. 6:10] We must be honest even in small matters. He who is dishonest in little will be dishonest in much. [Luke 16:10] We must avoid all that would tempt us to dishonesty; namely, evil companions, idleness, speculation, ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump

... well, all admitted; though in reality she had thought nothing about it—chance had favored her, that was all. Interesting though the subject under discussion had become, there was little time left the company for further speculation before Juan ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... will think it rather a humiliating confession to make," said Gerald Goddard, with a crestfallen air, "but during the last few years I have lost a great deal of money in unfortunate speculation, so—I have been somewhat dependent upon ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... Protestantism and the Russian Raskol preserve alike the signs of their origin, the stamp (so to speak) of the Church whence they have issued, as well as of the widely-differing states of society which gave them birth. In Western Europe love of speculation and a critical spirit gave rise to the larger part of modern sects, while in Russia they are the offspring of reverence and unenlightened obstinacy. In the West, the predominance of feeling over the value attached to the externals of religion has been the cause of religious divisions, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... occasioned some speculation, but no uneasiness, at headquarters. An officer of the Forest Service was too often called upon for sudden excursions in unexpected emergencies to make it possible for his chiefs to keep accurate track of all his movements. A day's trip ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... purpose in the succession of events] Chance. 2 — N. chance &c. 156; lot, fate &c. (necessity) 601; luck; good luck &c. (good) 618; mascot. speculation, venture, stake, game of chance; mere shot, random shot; blind bargain, leap in the dark; pig in a poke &c. (uncertainty) 475; fluke, potluck; faro bank; flyer*; limit. uncertainty; uncertainty principle, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... licences were granted to carry Spanish goods to Peru. These ships, being thus loaded, proceeded to Gibraltar, where the house of Gibbs & Co. provided them with British papers, in addition to the Spanish manifests supplied at Cadiz—this fact alone shewing that they considered the speculation illegitimate. ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... narrowed and became Pounddug Slough. In the Slough, near its ocean extremity, his old schooner, the Daisy M., lay stranded. He had not visited her for a week, and he wondered if the "spell of weather" had injured her to any extent. This speculation, however, was but momentary. The Daisy M. must look out for herself. His business was to reach Judge Gould's, in Denboro, before Mrs. Bascom and Bennie D. could arrange with that prominent citizen and legal light for the ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln

... man. The madness of the poets, again, is a favourite notion of Plato's, which occurs also in the Laws, as well as in the Phaedrus, Ion, and elsewhere. There are traces in the Laws of the same desire to base speculation upon history which we find in the Critias. Once more, there is a striking parallel with the paradox of the Gorgias, that 'if you do evil, it is better to be punished than to be unpunished,' in the Laws: 'To live having all goods without justice and virtue is the greatest of evils if ...
— Laws • Plato

... authority from the law of the prophet; with the interpreters of the Koran, and orthodox tradition; and with the whole theological tribe, polemics, mystics, scholastics, and moralists, the first or the last of writers, according to the different estimates of sceptics or believers. The works of speculation or science may be reduced to the four classes of philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and physic. The sages of Greece were translated and illustrated in the Arabic language, and some treatises, now lost in the original, have been recovered in ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... time of his life. Hitherto, beds had been strictly forbidden ground with Custard; and just what could have brought about this most delightful state of affairs was quite beyond his powers of imagination, but he was wisely wasting no time in idle speculation. ...
— Patricia • Emilia Elliott

... intellectualism and theorism of the Stagirite with the diametrically opposed ethics and religion of the Hebrew Bible. And he is apparently unaware of the yawning gulf extending between them. The ethics of the Bible is nothing if not practical. No stress is laid upon knowledge and theoretical speculation as such. The wisdom and the wise man of the book of Proverbs no more mean the theoretical philosopher than the fool and the scorner in the same book denote the one ignorant in theoretical speculation. "The beginning ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... interest in members of this class, and we should consequently have, as many writers confidently find that we do have, a very large proportion of scholars, scientists, savants derived from this class and deriving their incentive to scientific investigation and speculation from the discipline of a life of leisure. Some such result is to be looked for, but there are features of the leisure-class scheme of life, already sufficiently dwelt upon, which go to divert the intellectual ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... are that the power conferred by combination may be abused, that combinations may be formed for speculation in stocks rather than for conducting business, and that for this purpose prices may be temporarily raised instead of being lowered. These abuses are possible to a greater or less extent in all combinations, large or small, but this fact is ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller

... bad but I'll cure him. Yes, and I'll save this whole —— camp, whether they want it or not." Captain spoke strongly, his jaws set with determination. Klusky regarded him narrowly through close shrunk eyes, while speculation ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... skulk behind the skirts of Justice;—a State-Necessity that tries to steal a pitiful justification from whispered accusations and fabricated rumors. No, my Lords, that is no State Necessity;—tear off the mask, and you see coarse, vulgar avarice,—you see speculation, lurking under the gaudy disguise, and adding the guilt of libelling the public honor to ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... himself; and it sometimes will occur that a man is placed in a similar situation relative to his choice of a wife:—a more serious evil; as, although the prime cost may be nothing, there is no chance of getting rid of this latter speculation by re-vending, as you may the former. Now it happened that Nicholas Forster, of whom we have already made slight mention, although he considered at the time of his marriage that the person he had selected would exactly suit his focus, did eventually discover that he was more short-sighted ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... make his wealth a continual anxiety to him: ay, he may make it, by ambition, covetousness, and wild speculation, the cause of his shame and ruin; if only ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley

... for you to waste your time in useless speculation as to the unknowable source of your life-stream, or in seeking to trace it in the ocean. It is enough for you that it is, and that, while it runs its brief course, it is yours to make it yield its blessings. ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright

... Prince's palace in southern Germany at Donnaueschingen when the affair at Zabern and the cutting down of the lame shoemaker there shook the political and military foundations of the German Empire. Prince Max together with Prince Hohenlohe, Duke of Ugest, embarked, however, on a career of vast speculation in an association known as the Princes' Trust. They built, for instance, the great Hotel Esplanade in Berlin, and a hotel of the same name in Hamburg, and an enormous combined beer restaurant, theatre ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard

... surprised to find a long pistol of very curious and outlandish fashion, which, from its rusted condition, and its stock being worm-eaten and covered with barnacles, appeared to have been a long time under water. The unexpected appearance of this document of warfare occasioned much speculation among my pacific companions. One supposed it to have fallen there during the revolutionary war. Another, from the peculiarity of its fashion, attributed it to the voyagers in the earliest days of the settlement; perchance to the renowned Adrian Block, ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... Captain, which induced him to quit the service of the Company. In the course of his voyages to India, and in the Indian seas, he made what he thought an important discovery relative to the southern whale fishery: he communicated it to a mercantile house upon his return, and was employed by them in the speculation. He now, however, became unfortunate for the first time: his ship was wrecked off the island of Olaheite, and the crew and himself compelled to remain for two or three years on that barbarous ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney

... his style and expression are flat and slow, sometimes improper and absurd; the matter is heavy, trivial, and insipid, sometimes despicable and perfectly ridiculous; or else, on the other side, he runs up into unintelligible speculation, empty notions, and abstracted flights, all clad in ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift



Words linked to "Speculation" :   meditation, reflexion, surmise, pyramid, reflection, theory, investment, opinion, investment funds, speculate, smart money, conjecture, view, hypothesis, gamble, musing, venture, supposition, guess, rumination, thoughtfulness, possibility, divination, contemplation



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