suspicious

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Strange, suspicious and unnatural
aberrant
aberrantly
abnormal
abnormally
add
freakishly
freakishness
funnily
funnily enoughidiom
ghostliness
perverse
perversely
perversity
perverted
pervy
unorthodox
wack
wackadoodle
wackily
wackiness

suspect | American Dictionary

suspect
verb[ T ]
us/səˈspekt/

suspectverb[T] (THINK LIKELY)

to think or believe something is likely:
Medical investigators suspect the outbreak was caused by bacteria in the water supply.

suspectverb[T] (THINK GUILTY)

to think or believe that someone is guilty of something:
Authorities have the power to evict residents when they suspect criminal activity.

suspectverb[T] (DOUBT)

to doubt or not believe in something:
There is no reason to suspect their loyalty.
suspect
noun[ C ]
us/ˈsʌs·pekt/

suspectnoun[C] (GUILTY PERSON)

a person who is believed to be guilty of something:
After the robbery, the usual suspects were rounded up.
suspect
adjective
us/ˈsʌs·pekt, səˈspekt/

suspectadjective (CAUSING DOUBT)

not able to be trusted; possibly false or dangerous:
I can’t understand why my reasons seem suspect to a number of people.

suspect | Business English

suspect
verb[ T ]
uk /səˈspekt/us
to believe that something, usually something bad, may be true or may have happened:
suspect thatThe bank suspects that fraud has occurred.
suspect fraud/dishonesty/foul play
to believe that someone is guilty of committing a crime:
suspect sb/sth of doing sthThe company was suspected of paying bribes to Army officers to secure contracts.
suspect
noun[ C ]
uk /ˈsʌspekt/us
someone who police, employers, or other authorities believe has committed a crime:
a chief/key/prime suspect
suspect
adjective
uk /ˈsʌspekt/us
if something is suspect, it seems likely to be dishonest, dangerous, criminal, etc.:
The Financial Services Authority is cracking down on banks and brokers that have failed to report suspect deals by clients.
Bomb disposal experts destroyed a suspect package found at the airport.

Examples of suspect

suspect
Having become a mass profession, science was no longer suspected of becoming elitist and separated from the life and concerns of ordinary people.
Bertillonage was purely a system for linking suspects with their criminal records; it had no forensic application.
The restriction of fingerprint collection to people already suspected of a crime reinforced the tendency to rely upon punishment rather than effective state investigation.
We also suspected that the timber solutions would be more expensive.
I suspect that such factors as "inter-reflections between surfaces," though certainly demonstrable and interesting, are of secondary importance even in most natural environments.
If the cortex were organized in this manner, one would suspect that experimental results would have established such themes, as it has for subcortical structures.
I suspect that these escape routes will prove to be a useful addition to our toolkit.
At present the answer is not known, although we suspect that both directions of influence may be important.
However, there is no biological reason to suspect that these fullterm newborns differed in their hematological status.
The analysis is, however, suspect on several counts.
This is reflected in the prose of the book, making it always entertaining and easy to read if, one suspects, deliberately provocative at times.
I suspect that this over enthusiasm may turn off readers from what is an interesting volume in many ways.
All these cases, however, were resolved by eliciting confessions from the suspects after confronting them with the evidence.
This experience proves to be his passport from suspect outsider to the liminal status of trusted guest.
Either that control had weakened by the eighteenth century, or the model of ' social control ' at either period is suspect.
See all examples of suspect
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.