Guess

How to spell guess

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce guess

What does guess mean?

1. verbTo form an estimate or opinion about something without enough information to be certain.
2. nounAn estimate or conjecture made without certain knowledge.

Guess in a sentence

• verb

  Try to guess how much the repair will cost before you call the garage.

• noun

  My best guess is that the parcel will arrive on Friday.

• verb

  The new staff often guess the password when they forget it.

• noun

  His answer was a lucky guess rather than careful reasoning.

Where does guess come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Guess entered English in the 1300s as the Middle English verb gessen, meaning to form an opinion or to estimate without certain knowledge. Its roots lie in the North Sea trading languages: scholars connect it to Middle Dutch and Middle Low German gissen, and to the related Old Norse geta, which carried senses of getting, guessing, or speaking of something. The underlying idea was 'to get at' a truth by reckoning rather than by proof, which is exactly the modern shade of an uninformed estimate. The puzzling 'u' in the spelling was added later, partly under the influence of French scribal habits, to make sure the 'g' stayed hard before the 'e' instead of softening to a 'j' sound. That silent 'u' is the main spelling trap, since the word is pronounced simply as 'gess'.

How the word is built

• guess (single root; the silent 'u' after 'g' keeps the hard /g/ sound before 'e')