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say it: hahy-puh-THET-uh-kuhl
hypothetical is a noun and adjective meaning "a hypothetical possibility, circumstance, statement, proposal, situation, etc.". It is pronounced /ˌhaɪpəˈθɛtəkəl/ — hahy-puh-THET-uh-kuhl. It carries 2 recorded senses.
a hypothetical possibility, circumstance, statement, proposal, situation, etc.
“consider the following, just as a hypothetical”
based primarily on surmise rather than adequate evidence
“theories about the extinction of dinosaurs are still highly conjectural”
“the supposed reason for his absence”
“suppositious reconstructions of dead languages”
“hypothetical situation”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for hypothetical come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.