Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Inference |
InferenceNoun1. The reasoning involved in making a logical judgment on the basis of circumstantial evidence and prior conclusions rather than on the basis of direct observation. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "inference" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1321. (references) |
Note: Inference \In"fer*ence\, noun. [From Infer.]. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Computing | Inference |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
To infer is to draw a conclusion. To infer that X is to conclude that X is true; an inference is a conclusion drawn from a set of facts or circumstances. Much of the science of logic explores the validity or invalidity of inferences.The difference between implying and inferring is this: an author who writes that all men are mortal and Socrates is a man implies that Socrates is mortal; a reader who is so subtle as to notice that the author implies that and to consciously think "Therefore Socrates is mortal" infers that Socrates is mortal.
In reading, inferences are made about parts of the text where the meaning is implied but not explicit. Assesments of the ability to make inferences about written text are used to measure reading skill.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Inference."
Synonym: InferenceSynonym: illation (n). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Evidence | Adverb: by inference; according to, witness, a fortiori; still more, still less; raison de plus; in corroboration; n. of; valeat quantum; under seal, under one's hand and seal. |
Interpretation | Exegesis; expounding, exposition; hermeneutics; comment, commentary; inference; (deduction); illustration, exemplification; gloss, annotation, scholium, note; elucidation, dilucidation; eclaircissement, mot d'enigme. |
Judgment | Noun: result, conclusion, upshot; deduction, inference, ergotism; illation; corollary, porism; moral. |
Deduce, derive, gather, collect, draw an inference, make a deduction, weet, ween. | |
Latency Implication | Involve, imply, understand, allude to, infer, leave an inference; entail; whisper; (conceal). |
Indirect, crooked, inferential; by inference, by implication; implicit; constructive; allusive, covert, muffled; steganographic; understood, underhand, underground; delitescent, concealed. | |
Reasoning, | Argument; case, plaidoyer, opening; lemma, proposition, terms, premises, postulate, data, starting point, principle; inference; (judgment). |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
| Domain | Title | ||
References | |||
Books |
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Periodicals |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Title | Author | Quote |
Scarlet Letter | Hawthorne, Nathaniel | But, in that early severity of the Puritan character, an inference of this kind could not so indubitably be drawn |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Health | Standardized approaches to data collection for both the clinician and the researcher are particularly important in the measurement of variations over time. In many situations clinical action is based on an inference that the patient's condition has changed. (references) | |
Human Rights | United Kingdom | The law empowers judges to instruct juries that they may draw an inference of guilt from a defendant's refusal to answer questions during interrogation or trial, although no conviction can be based solely on such an inference. (references) |
United Kingdom | A similar provision is in effect in Northern Ireland, but the 1999 Criminal Evidence (Northern Ireland) Order prohibits the drawing of an inference from silence when a suspect is questioned before being permitted access to an attorney. (references) | |
Lexicography | Devil's Dictionary | TECHNICALITY, n. In an English court a man named Home was tried for slander in having accused his neighbor of murder. His exact words were: "Sir Thomas Holt hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook upon the head, so that one side of the head fell upon one shoulder and the other side upon the other shoulder." The defendant was acquitted by instruction of the court, the learned judges holding that the words did not charge murder, for they did not affirm the death of the cook, that being only an inference. |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| Speaker | Phrase(s) |
Nancy Pelosi | Well, when I said that they were connected, I don't know if you want to draw the inference I said that Osama bin Laden was involved, but that certainly those unsympathetic to our country were. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| "Inference" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 98.99% of the time. "Inference" is used about 493 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 98.99% | 488 | 12,253 |
| Noun (proper) | 0.81% | 4 | 175,879 |
| Noun (common) | 0.2% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Total | 100.00% | 493 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| Country | Name |
| USA | Inference Corporation |
| (more examples...) |
Source: compiled by the editor from Icon Group International, Inc.
Expressions using "inference": Bayesian inference ♦ complete inference system ♦ concurrent high inference machine ♦ control inference engine ♦ draw an inference ♦ draw inference from smth. ♦ fiducial inference ♦ generic inference engine ♦ grammatical inference ♦ inductive inference ♦ inference engine ♦ inference rule ♦ informal inference ♦ leave an inference ♦ logical inference per second ♦ Multiple Inference Multiple Expertise ♦ Multiple Inference Single Expertise ♦ parallel inference machine ♦ personal sequential inference machine ♦ plausible inference ♦ sequential inference machine ♦ statistical inference ♦ symbolic inference ♦ type inference. Additional references. | |
| Hyphenated Usage | |
Beginning with "inference": inference-procedures, inference-type. | |
Ending with "inference": high-inference. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "inference"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Afrikaans | gevolgtrekking (conclusion). (various references) | |
Albanian | nxjerrje (digging, discharge, drawing, eduction, ejection, elicitation, emission, excretion, extraction, extrusion, heave, leakage, outage, output, promulgation, recovery, runout, spew, stripping, superannuation), konkluzion (conclusion, corollary, eduction, finding, illation, opinion, peroration, resume, rider). (various references) | |
Arabic | ما يستنتج منه, ما يستدل عليه, إستنتاج (conclusion, deduction, derivation, illation, reasoning), إستدلال (deduction). (various references) | |
Bulgarian | заключение (conclusion, decision, finale, illation, peroration, upshot), заключаване, подразбиране (subaudition), извод (conclusion, consequence, consequent, corollary, illation, implication, outlet, rider, terminal). (various references) | |
Chinese | 論斷 , 推断 (generalise, generalised, generalize, generalized, Generalizing, infer, Inferred, Inferring). (various references) | |
Czech | závìr (breech, conclusion, deduction, eduction, end, ending, finish, result, upshot), odvození (illation), dùsledek (consequence, corollary, implication, ramification, result, sequel). (various references) | |
Danish | inferens, slutning (back end). (various references) | |
Dutch | gevolgtrekking (conclusion), conclusie (conclusion). (various references) | |
Esperanto | konkludo (conclusion). (various references) | |
Faeroese | niðurløga (conclusion), úrskurður (adjudication, conclusion, verdict). (various references) | |
Farsi | استنتاج (Deduction). (various references) | |
Finnish | inferenssi, päättely, johtopäätös (conclusion). (various references) | |
French | inférence. (various references) | |
Frisian | konklúzje (conclusion). (various references) | |
German | schlussfolgerung (conclusion), Schlußfolgerung (argumentation, conclusion, deduction), Folgerung (conclusion, deduction, implication, ratiocination). (various references) | |
Greek | συμπέρασμα (conclusion, conjecture, deduction, induction, upshot). (various references) | |
Hebrew | מסק " (conclusion, deduction, upshot), 'זר" שו" (analogy, syllogism). (various references) | |
Hungarian | következtetés (come off, conclusion, consequence, deduction, derivation, discursiveness, eduction, illation, induction, syllogism). (various references) | |
Indonesian | kesimpulan (conclusion, consecution, consecutive). (various references) | |
Italian | inferenza, conclusione (close, conclusion, decision, end, ending, finding, tag, upshot). (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | 推論 (deduction), 推理 (mystery or detective genre, reasoning), 推理 (mystery or detective genre, reasoning), 推断 (deduction). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | すいり (irrigation, mystery or detective genre, reasoning, water supply, water transportation), すいろ" (deduction), すい " (deduction). (various references) | |
Korean | " (Presuming, Presumptive). (various references) | |
Manx | infearys, fou (hearsay, hint, inkling, report, rumour). (various references) | |
Norwegian | slutning. (various references) | |
Papiamen | konklushon (conclusion). (various references) | |
Pig Latin | inferenceay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | inferncia (illation), inferência (conclusion), deduo, conseqncia (import, importance), concluso (implication, induction), conclusão (close, conclusion, consequence, deduction, effect, end, ending, finale, finding, result, termination, upshot, windup). (various references) | |
Romanian | implicaţie (implication), deducere (deduction), deducţie (conclusion, deduction, eduction), concluzie (conclusion, decision, deduction, determination, end, finding, laconism, opinion, upshot). (various references) | |
Russian | логический вывод. (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | zaključivanje (illation), zaključak (conclusion, finding, illation). (various references) | |
Spanish | inferencia (implication), conclusión (close, closure, conclusion, consensus, deduction, end, ending, epitome, finality, finish, hiatus). (various references) | |
Swedish | slutsats (conclusion, consequence, illation, implication). (various references) | |
Turkish | sonuç çıkarma (deduction, illation), sonuç (aftermath, close, conclusion, consequence, consequent, corollary, decision, deduction, denouement, effect, end, event, finding, fruit, harvest, issue, joy, outcome, payoff, produce, product, result, resultant, sequel, show, success, sum, upshot), anlam (acceptation, construction, content, denotation, effect, explanation, hang, import, meaning, point, purport, purview, sense, significance, significancy, signification, sound, strain, tenor). (various references) | |
Ukrainian | висновок (amen, conclusion, consequence, corollary, deduction, educt, eduction, illation, peroration), виведення (breeding, outlet), припущення (admission, assumption, calculation, conjecture, guess, hypothesis, perhaps, presumption, presupposition, subaudition, suppose, supposition, surmise, theory). (various references) | |
Vietnamese | sự suy ra (evolvement), sự luận ra điều suy ra, kết luận (sequel), điều luận ra (eject). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "inference": inferences. (additional references) | |
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"Inference" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: afference, enference, ifference, inerence, inferance, inferrence, infrence, ingerence, interence. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "inference" (pronounced i"nferuns) |
| 6 | -n f er u n s | conference. |
| 5 | -f er u n s | deference, difference, indifference, preference, reference. |
| 4 | -er u n s | belligerence, deliverance, endurance, exuberance, furtherance, ignorance, intolerance, irreverence, protuberance, reverence, severance, temperance, tolerance, utterance. |
| 3 | -u n s | absence, abstinence, abundance, acceptance, accordance, abeyance, abhorrence, acquaintance, acquiescence, adherence, admirations, admittance, adolescence, affluence, allegiance, alliance, allowance, ambiance, ambience, ambivalence, ambulance, annoyance, appearance, appliance, arrogance, ascendance, assistance, assurance, attendance, audience, avoidance, balance, beneficence, benevolence, bioscience, brilliance, cadence, capacitance, chrominance, circumference, clairvoyance, Clarence, clearance, coexistence, cognizance, coherence, coincidence, coinsurance, comeuppance, competence, compliance, concurrence, condolence, confidence, confluence, conformance, congruence, connivance, conscience, consequence, consistence, continuance, contrivance, convalescence, convenience, convergence, conveyance, correspondence, countenance, counterbalance, counterintelligence, credence, dalliance, decadence, Defeasance, defiance, dependence, deterrence, deviance, diligence, disallowance, disappearance, discontinuance, disobedience, dissidence, dissonance, distance, disturbance, divergence, dominance, ebullience, elegance, eloquence, emergence, eminence, entrance, equivalence, essence, evanescence, evidence, excellence, existence, expedience, experience, extravagance, flamboyance, Florence, forbearance, fragrance, governance, grievance, guidance, hindrance, imbalance, immanence, imminence, impatience, impedance, importance, impotence, imprudence, inadvertence, incidence, incoherence, incompetence, incontinence, inconvenience, independence, inductance, indulgence, inexperience, influence, inheritance, innocence, insignificance, insistence, insolence, instance, insurance, intelligence, interdependence, interference, intransigence, invariance, irrelevance, issuance, jurisprudence, licence, license, luminance, luminescence, maintenance, malfeasance, negligence, neuroscience, noncompliance, noninterference, nonviolence, nuisance, obedience, observance, obsolescence, occurrence, omnipotence, omnipresence, opulence, ordinance, Ordnance, overabundance, overconfidence, overdependence, overreliance, parlance, patience, penance, performance, permanence, persecutions, perseverance, persistence, pestilence, petulance, phosphorescence, pittance, precedence, predominance, preeminence, preponderance, prescience, presence, prevalence, prominence, provenance, Providence, province, prudence, pseudoscience, quintessence, radiance, reappearance, reassurance, recalcitrance, recognizance, reconnaissance, recurrence, reemergence, reinspections, reinsurance, relevance, reliance, reluctance, remembrance, reminiscence, remittance, repentance, resemblance, residence, resilience, resistance, resonance, resurgence, reticence, riddance, science, semblance, senescence, sentence, sequence, significance, silence, submergence, subservience, subsidence, subsistence, substance, surveillance, sustenance, teleconference, transcendence, transference, transience, turbulence, unbalance, Valence, variance, vehemence, vengeance, videoconference, vigilance, violence, virulence. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "c-e-e-e-f-i-n-n-r" | |
-2 letters: refence. | |
-3 letters: fencer, fennec, ferine, fierce, refine. | |
-4 letters: eerie, fence, finer, infer, inner, nicer, niece, renin. | |
-5 letters: cere, cine, cire, erne, fere, fern, fice, fine, fire, firn, free, neif, nene, nice, nine, reef, reif, rein, rice, rife. | |
| Words containing the letters "c-e-e-e-f-i-n-n-r" | |
+1 letter: inferences. | |
+2 letters: infrequence, referencing. | |
+3 letters: greenfinches, indifference, infrequences, interference. | |
+4 letters: birefringence, indifferences, inflorescence, infrequencies, interferences, reinforcement. | |
+5 letters: birefringences, indifferencies, inflorescences, interinfluence, overconfidence, reinforcements. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Quotations: Fiction 6. Quotations: Non-fiction 7. Quotations: Spoken 8. Usage Frequency | 9. Names: Company Usage 10. Expressions 11. Expressions: Internet 12. Translations: Modern | 13. Derivations 14. Rhymes 15. Anagrams 16. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
