hypothesise

English

Alternative forms

• hypothesize (US)

Etymology

From hypothesis +‎ -ise.

Verb

hypothesise (third-person singular simple present hypothesises, present participle hypothesising, simple past and past participle hypothesised)

1. Non-Oxford British English standard spelling of hypothesize.
   • 2010 March 31, Alan Wilson, “Redemption from the inside out”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     One path to salvation is that laid out by Lord May. An atheist, and president of the British Science Association, he hypothesises that religion could in fact be a protective mechanism thrown up by evolutionary processes to terrify people into prudence.

   • 2014 February 1, Will Self, “William Burroughs - the original Junkie”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:

     He went further, hypothesising that such an entity might devise the modern, psychological conception of possession as a function of the subject's own psyche: "since nothing is more dangerous to a possessor than being seen as a separate invading creature by the host it has invaded".

   • 2017 May 3, Mark Carnall, “Finding zombies, ghosts and Elvis in the fossil record”, in The Guardian‎^[3]:

     Wildlife biologist Stanley Temple hypothesised that perhaps the dodo tree was dependent on its seeds passing through the digestive system of dodos in order to properly germinate and that the handful of individuals in the 1970s were the last remaining trees from seeds that passed through a dodo in the 1690s-1700s when they went extinct.

   • 2021 July 8, Donna Lu, “Beetle that can walk upside down under water surface filmed in Australia in world first”, in The Guardian‎^[4]:

     They hypothesise the behaviour might have evolved as a means to avoid predators at the bottom of bodies of water.