mindmap root((JECT)) interject To interrupt a conversation with a comment or remark.
🌱His anger was growing as he listened to the conversation, and every so often he would interject a crude comment. 🌳According to its Latin roots, interject ought to mean literally "throw between." For most of the word's history, however, the only things that have been interjected have been comments dropped suddenly into a conversation. Interjections are often humorous, and sometimes even insulting, and the best interjections are so quick that the conversation isn't even interrupted. conjecture To guess.
🌱He was last heard of in Bogotá, and they conjectured that he had met his end in the Andes at the hands of the guerrillas. 🌳Formed with the prefix con-,"together," conjecture means literally "to throw together"—that is, to produce a theory by putting together a number of facts. So, for example, Columbus conjectured from his calculations that he would reach Asia if he sailed westward, and his later conjecture that there was a "Northwest Passage" by sea from the Atlantic to the Pacific over the North American continent was proved correct centuries later. projection An estimate of what might happen in the future based on what is happening now.
🌱The president has been hearing different deficit projections all week from the members of his economic team. 🌳Projection has various meanings, but what they all have in common is that something is sent out or forward. A movie is projected onto a screen; a skilled actress projects her voice out into a large theater without seeming to shout; and something sticking out from a wall can be called a projection. But the meaning we focus on here is the one used by businesses and governments. Most projections of this kind are estimates of a company's sales or profits—or of the finances of a town, state, or country—sometime in the future. trajectory The curved path that an object makes in space, or that a thrown object follows as it rises and falls to earth.
🌱Considering the likely range, trajectory, and accuracy of a bullet fired from a cheap handgun at 100 yards, the murder seemed incredible. 🌳Formed with part of the prefix trans-,"across," trajectory means a "hurling across." By calculating the effect of gravity and other forces, the trajectory of an object launched into space at a known speed can be computed precisely. Missiles stand a chance of hitting their target only if their trajectory has been plotted accurately. The word is used most often in physics and engineering, but not always; we can also say, for example, that the trajectory of a whole life may be set in a person's youth, or that a new book traces the long trajectory of the French empire.