Guessing

How to spell guessing

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce guessing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does guessing mean?

1. verbForming an opinion or estimate about something without being certain.
2. nounThe act of estimating or judging something without sure knowledge.

Guessing in a sentence

• verb

  Without the timetable in front of her, she was just guessing at the departure time.

• noun

  The new pricing tool takes the guessing out of quoting for clients.

• verb

  He kept guessing the price of the house instead of looking it up.

• noun

  A clear set of instructions saves the team a lot of guessing.

Where does guessing come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This is the -ing form of the verb 'guess', which entered Middle English around the 1300s as 'gessen', meaning to form an opinion or estimate without sure knowledge. The word is most likely of Scandinavian origin, related to Old Norse 'geta', meaning to get, to guess, or to speak of, and it has close cousins in the Middle Low German and Middle Dutch 'gissen', which also meant to estimate or conjecture. The underlying idea connects guessing with 'getting' at an answer, that is, mentally seizing a likely result. The doubled 's' that trips writers up reflects the short, clipped vowel of the root, much as in 'guess', 'mess', and 'press'. The unusual silent-feeling 'gu' spelling, where 'gu' simply represents a hard 'g' sound before 'e', is the same convention seen in 'guest' and 'guard', and it is the part most worth fixing in memory.

How the word is built

• guess (to estimate without certainty)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)