Surmise:
- a thought or idea based on scanty evidence : CONJECTURE
- to form a notion of from scanty evidence : IMAGINE, INFER [Merriam-Webster]
Learn something new everyday. I thought it meant deduction, but no. Noted in “The Wyoming Death Ship: Truth Be Told,” Joe Nickell, Skeptical Inquirer (May/June 2021):
Various words and phrases in the three accounts seem unconvincing as the language of simple outdoorsmen (though not for Gaddis, whose use of the phrase “the vasty deep” shows he knew his Shakespeare [see Henry IV, Part I, act 3, scene 1]). Consider Webber’s “to give vent to,” “assumed the shape of,” “the apparition,” “standing in a circle of close formation,” “covered with hoar-frost which glittered in the rays of the afternoon sun,” and “the Spectral Ship of Death”; Wilson’s “while gazing out upon the swiftly running water,” “the man whom,” “without a sign of animation,” “frost-laden sailcloth,” “what I surmised,” “the frightfully scarred face,” “my supposition is that”; and Heibe’s (as related by Gaddis) “the vapory vessel,” “a scene of horror on the phantom deck,” and so on.
I love the title of the article, and the picture that accompanies it at the link is nice, too.
