speculate
SPEK-yuh-laytverbMeaning to form ideas or theories without firm evidence
Memory hook SPEC-ulate: look and guess, no peeking. The kids stare at the big wrapped box and guess: a bike? a puppy? a robot? With no way to peek inside, all they can do is speculate.
Fans speculated about who would win the baking contest.
In context With no letters or diaries to go on, historians can only speculate about why the village was abandoned: perhaps a flood, perhaps a sickness, perhaps a better harvest elsewhere.
Similar guess, theorize, hypothesize, conjecture
Opposite know, prove
From Latin speculari, “to watch, to look out,” from specere, “to look.”