suspicion

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Anglo-Norman suspecioun, from Old French suspeçun or sospeçon, from Latin suspectiō, from the past participle from suspicere, from sub- (“up to”) with specere (“to look at”).

Pronunciation
  • Audio (US)(file)
  • IPA(key): /sə.ˈspɪ.ʃən/
  • Rhymes: -ɪʃən

Noun

suspicion (countable and uncountable, plural suspicions)

  1. The act of suspecting something or someone, especially of something wrong.
    • 1967, Sleigh, Barbara, Jessamy, 1993 edition, Sevenoaks, Kent: Bloomsbury, →ISBN, page 96:
      His unruly hair was slicked down with water, and as Jessamy introduced him to Miss Brindle his face assumed a cherubic innocence which would immediately have aroused the suspicions of anyone who knew him.
  2. The condition of being suspected.
  3. Uncertainty, doubt.
    • 1892, Walter Besant, chapter III, in The Ivory Gate: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], OCLC 16832619:
      In former days every tavern of repute kept such a room for its own select circle, a club, or society, of habitués, who met every evening, for a pipe and a cheerful glass. […] Strangers might enter the room, but they were made to feel that they were there on sufferance: they were received with distance and suspicion.
  4. A trace, or slight indication.
    a suspicion of a smile
    • (Can we date this quote?) Adolphus William Ward
      The features are mild but expressive, with just a suspicion […] of saturnine or sarcastic humor.
  5. The imagining of something without evidence.

Derived terms

Translations
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Translations to be checked

Verb

suspicion (third-person singular simple present suspicions, present participle suspicioning, simple past and past participle suspicioned)

  1. (nonstandard, dialectal) To suspect; to have suspicions.
    • (Can we date this quote?) Rudyard Kipling
      Mulvaney continued— "Whin I was full awake the palanquin was set down in a street, I suspicioned, for I cud hear people passin' an' talkin'. But I knew well I was far from home. […]
    • 2012, B. M. Bower, Cow-Country (page 195)
      "I've been suspicioning here was where they got their information right along," the sheriff commented, and slipped the handcuffs on the landlord.

Trivia

One of three common words ending in -cion, which are coercion, scion, and suspicion.[1][2]

References
  • “suspicion” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001–2019.
  1. Notes and Queries, Vol. VI, No. 10, 1889, October, p. 365
  2. Editor and Publisher, Volume 9, 1909, p. 89

French

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /sys.pi.sjɔ̃/

Noun

suspicion f (plural suspicions)

  1. suspicion

Synonyms
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