Surmiser

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who forms a conclusion or opinion based on incomplete information or assumptions about a situation
2. someone who speculates without necessarily having all the facts in hand
3. an individual who interprets evidence subjectively to arrive at a judgment or belief

Etymology: "Surmiser" is a plain agent noun: a person who surmises, built by adding the suffix "-er" to "surmise". The suffix turns a verb into a noun for the one doing the action, as in "teacher" from "teach" or "driver" from "drive". The base word "surmise" entered English from Anglo-French "surmis", the past participle of "surmettre", meaning to accuse or to suppose, formed from "sur-" (over, upon) and "mettre" (to put), so the underlying idea is of putting something on top of the facts without proof. The "-er" ending is the same one that produced words like "writer" and "singer" in English, and it attaches freely to verbs of this kind. Because "surmise" itself already carries the sense of a guess, the agent noun inherits that tentative quality: a surmiser is someone who reaches a conclusion by stacking assumptions onto thin evidence rather than by demonstrating anything.

Synonyms: critic, faultfinder, complainer

Antonyms: praiser, complimenter