suspect

verb

1. 1

   To imagine or suppose (something) to be true, or to exist, without proof.

   to suspect the presence of disease

   From her hand I could suspect no ill.

   Mr. Campion appeared suitably impressed and she warmed to him. He was very easy to talk to with those long clown lines in his pale face, a natural goon, born rather too early she suspected.

   WikiLeaks did not cause these uprisings but it certainly informed them. The dispatches revealed details of corruption and kleptocracy that many Tunisians suspected, but could not prove, and would cite as they took to the streets.

2. 2

   To distrust or have doubts about (something or someone).

   to suspect the truth of a story

   An inhabitant of Gubio, in the duchy of Urbino, in Italy, suspecting the fidelity of his wife, he, in a fit of jealousy, in order to find out whether his suspicion was true, did what the ecclesiastick history informs us Origen did from devotion.

3. 3

   To believe (someone) to be guilty.

   I suspect him of being the thief.

4. 4

   To have suspicion.

5. 5

   obsoleteTo look up to; to respect.

noun

1. 1

   A person who is suspected of something, in particular of committing a crime.

   1942, Casablanca, written by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch Round up the usual suspects.

adjective

1. 1

   Viewed with suspicion; suspected.

   What I can do or offer is suspect.

   In his first book since the 2008 essay collection Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature, David Quammen looks at the natural world from yet another angle: the search for the next human pandemic, what epidemiologists call “the next big one.” His quest leads him around the world to study a variety of suspect zoonoses—animal-hosted pathogens that infect humans.

   What appears suspect about the Beeching Report is how quickly it was railroaded through, with the answers manufactured before the questions were asked.

2. 2

   Viewing with suspicion; suspecting.

   Now I’m suspect of other advice that I read in your pages.

Forms

plural

suspects

comparative

more suspect

superlative

most suspect

past tense

suspected

past participle

suspected

present participle

suspecting

third person singular

suspects