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SUPPOSED
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Based primarily on surmise rather than adequate evidence
Example:
hypothetical situation
Synonyms:
conjectural; divinatory; hypothetic; hypothetical; supposed; suppositional; suppositious; supposititious
Classified under:
Similar:
theoretic; theoretical (concerned primarily with theories or hypotheses rather than practical considerations)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Mistakenly believed
Example:
the supposed existence of ghosts
Classified under:
Similar:
improbable; unlikely (not likely to be true or to occur or to have occurred)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Required or under orders
Example:
he was supposed to go to the store
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
obligated (caused by law or conscience to follow a certain course)
Sense 4
Meaning:
Doubtful or suspect
Example:
these so-called experts are no help
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
questionable (subject to question)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
Past simple / past participle of the verb suppose
Context examples:
Yes, but this of yours, which is supposed to be an attack upon him, I don't understand.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
It is the supposed murder of Colonel Barclay, of the Royal Mallows, at Aldershot, which I am investigating.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I supposed you'd take it so.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
Seeing a respectably-dressed person, a lady as she supposed, she came forward with civility.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
This was something that dogs were not supposed to do.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
Wild and full of childish whims as Em'ly was, she was more of a little woman than I had supposed.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
They would soon, she supposed, be settled at Delaford.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
Something, he supposed, might be attributed to his connection with them, but yet he had never met with so much attention in the whole course of his life.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
It was, however, in the larger animals, and especially in the larger animals supposed to have been long extinct, that the interest of the public was naturally centered.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
We were, as we believed, many hundred miles from any land; but this apparition seemed to denote that it was not, in reality, so distant as we had supposed.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
