English

Alternative forms

• suspition (obsolete)

Noun

suspicion ‎(plural suspicions)

1. The act of suspecting something or someone, especially of something wrong.
2. The condition of being suspected.
3. Uncertainty, doubt.
   • 1893, Walter Besant, The Ivory Gate, chapter III:

     In former days every tavern of repute kept such a room for its own select circle, a club, or society, of habitués, who met every evening, for a pipe and a cheerful glass. […] Strangers might enter the room, but they were made to feel that they were there on sufferance: they were received with distance and suspicion.

4. A trace, or slight indication.

   a suspicion of a smile‎

   • Adolphus William Ward (1837-1924)

     The features are mild but expressive, with just a suspicion […] of saturnine or sarcastic humor.

5. The imagining of something without evidence.

Derived terms

• suspicious
• suspect
• sneaking suspicion

Translations

Trivia

One of three common words ending in -cion, which are coercion, scion, and suspicion.^[1][2]

References

1. ↑ Notes and Queries, Vol. VI, No. 10, 1889, October, p. 365
2. ↑ Editor and Publisher, Volume 9, 1909, p. 89

Verb

suspicion ‎(third-person singular simple present suspicions, present participle suspicioning, simple past and past participle suspicioned)

1. (nonstandard, dialect) To suspect; to have suspicions.
   • Rudyard Kipling

     Mulvaney continued— "Whin I was full awake the palanquin was set down in a street, I suspicioned, for I cud hear people passin' an' talkin'. But I knew well I was far from home. […]

   • 2012, B. M. Bower, Cow-Country (page 195)

     "I've been suspicioning here was where they got their information right along," the sheriff commented, and slipped the handcuffs on the landlord.

References

• “suspicion” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary (2001).

French

Noun

suspicion f ‎(plural suspicions)

1. suspicion

Synonyms

• soupçon