Word Confusion: Conjecture versus Conjuncture

Plural for the noun: conjectures
Gerund: conjecturing

Third person present verb: conjecture
Past tense or past participle: conjectured
Present participle: conjecturing

Plural: conjunctures

• Guesswork
• [Mathematical] An unproven mathematical or scientific theorem
• [In textual criticism] The suggestion or reconstruction of a reading of a text not present in the original source

[Obsolete] Interpretation of occult signs

Verb, reporting:
Form an opinion or supposition about (something) on the basis of incomplete information

• [In textual criticism] Propose (a reading)

Verb, intransitive:
To make a conjecture

Verb, transitive:
To judge or conclude by conjecture

• Guess

• A state of affairs

A critical set of circumstances

• A crisis

The purpose of the opening in the wall is open to conjecture.

The commentators made various conjectures about the outcome of the next election.

“His conjecture that the orbits of the planets are circumscribed by the five platonic solids were no more supported by Tycho’s data than by Copernicus” (Sagan).

Goldbach’s conjecture “states that every even natural number greater than 2 is the sum of two prime numbers” (Goldbach’s).

It’s the purpose of conjecture, i.e., textual criticism, to explore the changes made in historical texts taking into account technical, philological, literary, or aesthetic circumstances.

“Whence did Melampus, the Augure, conjecture at the slaughter of the Greeks by the flight of little birds, when he saith: “Thou see now that no bird takes his flight in fair weather” (Agrippa, p 170).

Verb, reporting:
Many conjectured that the jury would not agree.

He conjectured the existence of an otherwise unknown feature.

One of the professor’s advanced students has conjectured as to the historical context of one of their assigned readings.

Verb, intransitive:
We are all conjecturing here.

I should like your conjecturing restricted to the conceivable.

“What is the organization of these animals, we can scarcely conjecture” (Verne).

“A few ordered a tree set aside for the day; others stopped to price, inspect, and conjecture” (Smith).

Verb, transitive:
“From the comparative silence below . . .
I conjectured that Mr Rochester was now at liberty” (Brontë).

It is impossible to conjecture its length.

She conjectured the existence of a completely new species.

There was the wider political conjuncture to consider.

There’s a “power that lies in the conjuncture of faith and fatherland” (Conor Cruise O’Brien).

Too many “reports [were] on the deteriorating world conjuncture and the disappointment of earlier hopes” (Financial Times).