How to Use speculative in a Sentence

speculative

adjective
  • His conclusions are highly speculative.
  • Investors don't want to get caught up in speculative plays and hype.
    — Susan Tompor, Detroit Free Press, 26 Dec. 2020
  • His first goal was speculative but well hit, even if the keeper should have kept it out.
    — SI.com, 30 Oct. 2019
  • There’s no one event that can explain the surge, apart from a wave of speculative zeal.
    — David Meyer, Fortune, 17 Dec. 2020
  • That’s a bit speculative, but the first five reasons are not.
    — Michael Tomasky, The New Republic, 6 Oct. 2023
  • The scale is no longer speculative.
    — Anisha Chawla, Forbes.com, 27 May 2026
  • The payoff was too far out and speculative.
    — Gautam Mukunda, Twin Cities, 14 May 2026
  • Since gold pays no income, speculative demand for it tends to rise when rates fall.
    — WSJ, 1 Dec. 2023
  • The other options out there seem a bit speculative at this point.
    — Mark Zeigler, San Diego Union-Tribune, 27 Aug. 2023
  • For most voters, the risks of a shift in power are speculative.
    — Samuel Goldman, The Week, 13 May 2022
  • Yet all of the claims of fraud made Tuesday were speculative.
    — Jeremy Roebuck, Anchorage Daily News, 18 Nov. 2020
  • This is not the speculative stuff of red gowns and dystopian fiction.
    — Pat Beall, Orlando Sentinel, 23 June 2024
  • So gold looks to me kind of like a classical, speculative blowoff.
    — Lee Ying Shan, CNBC, 13 Feb. 2026
  • That doesn’t mean speculative fiction is bad or not worth anyone else’s time.
    — Literary Hub, 2 Oct. 2025
  • To me, the relevant hints still seem too speculative and loose.
    — Quanta Magazine, 25 Sep. 2024
  • Oklo has been one of the leading speculative stocks this year.
    — Jim Cramer, CNBC, 22 Oct. 2025
  • What’s certain is that humanoids are no longer a speculative bet.
    — Kaif Shaikh, Interesting Engineering, 10 Sep. 2025
  • These are not speculative ideas.
    — Atharva Gosavi, Interesting Engineering, 14 Jan. 2026
  • What the forms of life might be on these many worlds is a question before which even the most speculative mind may quail.
    — Scientific American, 23 Jan. 2020
  • Clients are very curious about what all this is and what part of the market is speculative.
    — Fortune Editors, Fortune, 25 May 2022
  • Ross said such questions were speculative and not at issue in the case before the court.
    — Arkansas Online, 7 Feb. 2023
  • The day seems to be controlled by a collapse in crypto and more speculative names.
    — Jim Cramer, CNBC, 14 Oct. 2025
  • If speculative excess ends badly, the fall might drag down much of the rest of the market.
    — James MacKintosh, WSJ, 28 Feb. 2021
  • This speculative leap marked a turning point.
    — Literary Hub, 26 Feb. 2026
  • The other two are more tied to the pandemic and thus more speculative.
    — Laurent Belsie, The Christian Science Monitor, 14 Dec. 2020
  • Prices rose sharply, and all the conditions for a speculative bubble were in place.
    — Veena Jetti, Forbes, 20 May 2022
  • Below are the three most salient lessons from the depths of the speculative fiction trenches.
    — Literary Hub, 4 Nov. 2025
  • This is all speculative for now, in several senses of the word.
    — Amanda Mull, The Atlantic, 4 Feb. 2022
  • Then the episode takes a turn towards speculative fiction, and the racial roles reverse.
    — Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone, 8 Apr. 2022
  • There is a speculative element to the rise in metal prices, too.
    — The Economist, 11 June 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'speculative.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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