conjecturingly

comparative more conjecturingly · superlative most conjecturingly

1. In a conjecturing manner.

   The wizard gazed at him conjecturingly, as if he were a riddle on some dusty parchment.

   1979, Patricia A. McKillip, Riddle of Stars, Garden City, N.Y.: Nelson Doubleday, Inc., page 434

   5 more examples

   Hercules. [Conjecturingly.] Thy father at least, if he be gone, is indeed full-of-years![…]Hercules. [Conjecturingly and with interrogation.] Has he not told me of some disaster there is?

   1824, T. W. C. Edwards, Ευριπιδου Αλκηστις. The Alcestis of Euripides, Literally Translated into English Prose; from the Text of Monk: with the Ooriginal Greek, the Metres, the Order, and English Accentuation. To Which Are Subjoined Numerous Explanatory Notes. For the Use of Students., London: Matthew Iley, pages 44 and 62

   Then lost in anguish, as he homeward went, / O’er gate and stile conjecturingly he bent, / Making resolves, as soon as he could find / A chance renew’d, to boldly speak his mind, / Deeply repenting over what was past, / To be so foolish as let slip the last.

   1827, John Clare, “Jockey and Jenny; or, The Progress of Love”, in The Shepherd’s Calendar: With Village Stories, and Other Poems, London: […] for John Taylor, […] by James Duncan, […], page 128

   And yet had they not been so much alike in one sense, Miss Talbot and Mr. Hastings might have found some room in their hearts to think pityingly, yet conjecturingly of what it was that made them each so rapt in their own thoughts.

   1852, Miss Pennefather, chapter X, in Helen Talbot, volume III, London: Colburn and Co., page 170

   A thoughtful spirit drifting upon this tide in a large city like Paris cannot but often think of this, and shiver with the feeling that beneath and all around are scattered thickly, if invisibly, putrescent corpses and whitening skeletons. But sometimes strange things do come to the surface—featureless, formless, unrecognizable objects, upon which men gaze wonderingly, conjecturingly, but unknowingly; and which are in reality the disjecta membra of ghastly things over whose hideousness the unquiet billows once mercifully swept.

   1876 December 20, Moise, “Our Paris Letter. […]”, in The Inter Ocean, volume V, number 253, Chicago, Ill., published 13 January 1877, page 9

   Neale, in his talks with Larry and Slingerland, had dwelt long and conjecturingly upon what life was going to be in the construction camps.

   1918, Zane Grey, chapter IX, in The U. P. Trail, New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, page 98