From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishspeculativespec‧u‧la‧tive /ˈspekjələtɪv $ -leɪ-/ adjective 1 GUESSbased on guessing, not on information or factshighly/purely/largely speculative a purely speculative theory about life on other planets2 BBBFbought or done in the hope of making a profit later speculative investments3 if you give someone a speculative look, you look at them while trying to guess something about them —speculatively adverb Delaney eyed her speculatively.
Examples from the Corpus
speculative• There does, however, appear to be very little evidence to directly support such theories which thus remain largely speculative.• Until I saw this move I suspected that Kasparov's attack might be somewhat speculative.• The papers were full of talk of Lucan's whereabouts, all of it entirely speculative.• Theories of the origin of life are partly speculative.• Until further research has been done, any figures that I can give you are highly speculative.• Again, this line of reasoning is purely speculative.• For example, the impact of electricity privatisation is speculative.• Descriptions of how this ancient tribe lived are speculative at best.• Almost any palaeontological reconstruction or interpretation is speculative, but that does not mean that no speculation is either rewarding or illuminating.• Contemporaries distrusted them in the belief that they brought an unsavoury speculative element to the market in stocks.• Personal opinion or preferences and speculative imaginings have no place in science.• speculative stockshighly/purely/largely speculative• Again, this line of reasoning is purely speculative.• All three approaches were highly speculative.• At present, further discussion of this question is largely speculative.• The programme of explaining characteristics of dominant life-forms in terms simply of survival value is controversial and highly speculative.• There does, however, appear to be very little evidence to directly support such theories which thus remain largely speculative.• While there is undoubtedly a demand for more golf courses, it needs to be underlined that many applications are purely speculative.• This, however, is highly speculative and largely dependent on a perpetual bull market.• Federally insured thrifts that traditionally had limited their investments to home mortgages began bingeing on highly speculative investments.From Longman Business Dictionaryspeculativespec‧u‧la‧tive /ˈspekjələtɪv-leɪ-/ adjective1FINANCE bought or done in the hope of making a profitTheir £461 million bid for the electronics company led to a good deal of speculative activity yesterday.Prices fell on heavy speculative selling after the weekend.2based on guessing, not on information or factsThese figures are, at best, speculative.She dismisses rumours of a boardroom split as “totally speculative”. 