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inference

noun

Simple meaning

A conclusion you reach from the facts you have.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

inferuhns

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈɪnfɚəns

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. uncountable

    The act or process of inferring by deduction or induction.

  2. countable

    That which is inferred; a truth or proposition drawn from another which is admitted or supposed to be true; a conclusion; a deduction.

  3. uncountableartificial intelligence

    Output generated by a trained machine learning model as it applies learned patterns to new data.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
Frequency
Moderately Common
Formality
Technical

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: The act or process of inferring by deduction or induction.

Used this way, inference is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Nearby words

  • illation , rarer, so it draws attention

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Reasoning

logical inferencereasonable inference

Other combinations

inference enginenatural inferenceinductive inferencefair inference

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • inferioradjectiveDerived adjective

    Related to The act or process of inferring by deduction or induction.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: act or process of inferring by deduction

illationRare

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.