Synonyms:
inference, illation
Meaning: the reasoning involved in drawing a conclusion or making a logical judgment on the basis of circumstantial evidence and prior conclusions rather than on the basis of direct observation
Usage examples
I grant the truth of your inference.
No inference is permissible in either direction.
His inference is more or less dubious and hypothetical.
But, in that early severity of the Puritan character, an inference of this kind could not so indubitably be drawn.
The inference was irresistible that Gallia was receding from the sun, and traveling far away across the planetary regions.
The only inference possible, he replied, is that pleasures which are approved by the lover of wisdom and reason are the truest.
In the latter case, indeed, and perhaps in the former as well, it would seem more reasonable to draw an exactly opposite inference.
But if the inference which the handbill suggested was correct--if she was really alone at that moment in the city of York--where was she likely to be?
If we found ourselves in a foreign world, where tables looked like cushions and cushions like tables, we should similarly discover how much of what we think we see is really inference.
Now he saw that her reply was open to more than a single construction. It might, of course, mean that she did not love Kulan Tith; and so, by inference, be taken to mean that she loved another.