SUSPECT • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Suspect

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/səspˈɛkt/ /sˈəspˌɛkt/ Listen

verb

Suspect v. t. (past & past part. suspected; pres. part. suspecting)

To imagine to exist; to have a slight or vague opinion of the existence of, without proof, and often upon weak evidence or no evidence; to mistrust; to surmise; commonly used regarding something unfavorable, hurtful, or wrong; as, to suspect the presence of disease. "Nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little; and therefore men should remedy suspicion by procuring to know more." "From her hand I could suspect no ill."

To imagine to be guilty, upon slight evidence, or without proof; as, to suspect one of equivocation.

To hold to be uncertain; to doubt; to mistrust; to distruct; as, to suspect the truth of a story.

To look up to; to respect. (Obs.)

Synonyms: To mistrust; distrust; surmise; doubt.

Suspect v. i. To imagine guilt; to have a suspicion or suspicions; to be suspicious. "If I suspect without cause, why then make sport at me."

noun

Suspect n.

Suspicion. (Obs.) "So with suspect, with fear and grief, dismayed."

One who, or that which, is suspected; an object of suspicion; formerly applied to persons and things; now, only to persons suspected of crime.

adjective

Suspect adj.

Suspicious; inspiring distrust. (Obs.) "Suspect (was) his face, suspect his word also."

Suspected; distrusted. (Obs.) "What I can do or offer is suspect."

See images of 'Suspect'

Etymology of 'Suspect'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Suspect" Quotes from Famous Books

... open violence, then to render some tardy aid to the weaker side, so as to plunge them deeper in hostilities, wherein both may exhaust their forces without being led by your putting forth an excess of strength to suspect you of a desire to ruin them and remain their master. Where this is well managed, it will almost always happen that you succeed in effecting the object ...

— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli

... showed himself a brave and skilful soldier, and quickly rose to high command in the Hebrew army, and to be the son-in-law of Saul. His victories over the Philistines were celebrated in popular songs, and the king began to suspect him of aiming at the throne. He was forced to fly for his life, and to hide among the mountain fastnesses of Judah, where his boyhood had been spent. Here he became a brigand-chief, outlaws and adventurers ...

— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce

... that a white people, of which he has heard rumours all his life, exists somewhere on the highlands in the vast, still unexplored interior, and his great ambition is to find them before he dies. This is the wild quest upon which he and his companions have departed, and from which I shrewdly suspect they never will return. One letter only have I received from the old gentleman, dated from a mission station high up the Tana, a river on the east coast, about three hundred miles north of Zanzibar. In it he says they have gone through many hardships ...

— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard

... wife and daughter, and armed with these letters of introduction and 'a Foreign Office bag, more,' wrote Mrs. Reeve, 'to give us importance, I suspect, than to convey despatches,' Reeve started as soon as his work was cleared off and the October number of the 'Review' was ...

— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... chance of escape would be better, if I went back to the same side of the road that they first went, for the purpose of deceiving them; as I supposed that they would not suspect my going in the same direction that they went, for the purpose of escaping ...

— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb

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