Conjecture
Etymology
From Latin "coniectura," "a conclusion, inference, or guess," literally "a throwing together," from "conicere," "to throw together," built from "com," "together," and "iacere," "to throw." The image is of tossing available scraps of evidence into a heap and reading a tentative pattern from them. In mathematics a conjecture is a proposition believed true but not yet proved, keeping that flavor of the unconfirmed.
noun · /kun-JEK-chur/
An opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information; an educated guess.
What it names
The honest placeholder — a claim you hold provisionally and label as such, distinct from something you actually know or have shown.
Example
Whether the outage caused the churn or merely coincided with it remained pure conjecture.
Related idea
A conjecture is offered as unproven and provisional; an axiom is asserted as needing no proof at all — opposite attitudes toward the same lack of demonstration.
noun · /kun-JEK-chur/
In mathematics, a statement proposed as true but not yet proved.
What it names
A precisely stated proposition that mathematicians believe holds but have neither proved nor disproved, such as Goldbach’s conjecture.
Example
The conjecture stood unproven for three centuries before anyone found a proof.
Related idea
This is sharper than the everyday sense of a mere guess: a mathematical conjecture is a formal claim awaiting proof, unlike a theorem, which has already been proved.