suspicion
Etymology

From Middle English suspecioun, borrowed from Latin suspicio, from suspicere, from sub- ("up to") with specere ("to look at").

Pronunciation
  • IPA: /səˈspɪʃ.ən/
Noun

suspicion

  1. The act of suspecting something or someone, especially of something wrong.
  2. The condition of being suspected.
  3. Uncertainty, doubt.
    • 1892, Walter Besant, chapter III, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC ↗:
      In former days every tavern of repute kept such a room for its own select circle, a club, or society, of habitués, who met every evening, for a pipe and a cheerful glass. […] Strangers might enter the room, but they were made to feel that they were there on sufferance: they were received with distance and suspicion.
  4. A trace, or slight indication.
    a suspicion of a smile
    • 1879, Adolphus William Ward, Chaucer:
      The features are mild but expressive, with just a suspicion […] of saturnine or sarcastic humor.
  5. The imagining of something without evidence.
Synonyms Translations Translations Translations Translations Translations Verb

suspicion (suspicions, present participle suspicioning; simple past and past participle suspicioned)

  1. (dialect) To suspect; to have suspicions.
    • 1876, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XXVI, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Hartford, Conn.: The American Publishing Company, →OCLC ↗, page 202 ↗:
      “Well, what’s more dangerous than coming here in the day time!—anybody would suspicion us that saw us.”
    • 2012, B. M. Bower, Cow-Country, page 195:
      "I've been suspicioning here was where they got their information right along," the sheriff commented, and slipped the handcuffs on the landlord.



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