suppose

verb

Etymology: From Middle English supposen, borrowed from Old French supposer, equivalent to prefix sub- (“under”) + poser (“to place”); corresponding in meaning to Latin supponere (“to put under, to substitute, falsify, counterfeit”), suppositum. See pose.

1. To take for granted; to conclude, with less than absolute supporting data; to believe.

   “I suppose we all agree that this is the best solution.”

   “I won't be back before midday, I don't suppose.”

2. To theorize or hypothesize.

   “Suppose that A implies B and B implies C. Then A implies C.”

   “Of all the queer collections of humans outside of a crazy asylum, it seemed to me this sanitarium was the cup winner. […] When you're well enough off so's you don't have to fret about anything but your heft or your diseases you begin to get queer, I suppose.”

3. To imagine; to believe; to receive as true.

   “How easy is a bush supposed a bear!”

   “Let not my lord suppose that they have slain all the young men, the king's sons; for Amnon only is dead.”

4. To reckon to be, to account or esteem as.

   “[He] keeps you from the honors of a Queene, Being ſuppoſde his worthleſſe Concubine.”

5. To require to exist or to be true; to imply by the laws of thought or of nature.

   “Purpose supposes foresight.”

   “One falsehood always supposes another, and renders all you can say suspected.”

6. To put by fraud in the place of another; to substitute fraudulently.

   “A Water-monster, called the Nickard, does enter by night the chamber, where a woman is brought to bed, and stealeth when they are all sleeping, the new-born child and supposeth another in its place, which child growing up is like a monster and commonly dumb.”

   “... that they when the queen is in child-birth, be present and warily observe lest the la-dies should privily counterfeit the inheritable sex, by supposing some other male, when the true birth is female,[…]”