Speculative may refer to:

In arts and entertainment

Speculative art (disambiguation) Speculative art can refer to: *Gambling *Investment **Investing in fine art *Fantasy art *Science fiction art *Alchemy See also

*Futurology *Futurism (art), Futurism *Surrealism *Absurdism *Dada *Speculative poetry *Speculative fiction {{disa ...

Speculative fiction Speculative fiction is an umbrella term, umbrella genre of fiction that encompasses all the subgenres that depart from Realism (arts), realism, or strictly imitating everyday reality, instead presenting fantastical, supernatural, futuristic, or ...

, which includes elements created out of human imagination, such as the science fiction and fantasy genres ** Speculative Fiction Group, a Persian literature group whose website which is named Fantasy Academy ** Speculative poetry, a genre of poetry that focuses on fantastic, science fictional and mythological themes * Speculative screenplay, or spec script, a non-commissioned, unsolicited screenplay * The Speculative Society, a Scottish Enlightenment society dedicated to public speaking and literary composition, founded in 1764

In computing

Speculative execution Speculative execution is an optimization (computer science), optimization technique where a computer system performs some task that may not be needed. Work is done before it is known whether it is actually needed, so as to prevent a delay that woul ...

, in computer systems is doing work, the result of which may not be needed. This performance optimization technique is used in pipelined processors and other systems *

Speculative multithreading Thread Level Speculation (TLS), also known as Speculative Multi-threading, or Speculative Parallelization, is a technique to speculatively execute a section of computer code that is anticipated to be executed later in parallel with the normal ex ...

, a dynamic parallelization technique that depends on out-of-order execution to achieve speedup on multiprocessor CPUs. It is a kind of speculative execution that occurs at the thread level as opposed to the instruction level

In economics

Speculation In finance, speculation is the purchase of an asset (a commodity, good (economics), goods, or real estate) with the hope that it will become more valuable in a brief amount of time. It can also refer to short sales in which the speculator hope ...

, the practice of engaging in risky transactions in an attempt to profit from fluctuations in market value **

Speculative attack In economics, a speculative attack is a precipitous selling of untrustworthy assets by previously inactive speculators and the corresponding acquisition of some valuable assets ( currencies, gold). The first model of a speculative attack was conta ...

, denoting precipitous acquisition of assets by previously inactive speculators ** Speculative demand, a demand for financial assets that is not dictated by real transactions such as trade or financing ** Speculative development, in real estate **

Speculative grade In finance, a high-yield bond (non-investment-grade bond, speculative-grade bond, or junk bond) is a bond that is rated below investment grade by credit rating agencies. These bonds have a higher risk of default or other adverse credit even ...

, a grade of bond below investment grade, having higher risk, but typically pay higher yield than better quality bonds **

Economic bubble An economy is an area of the Production (economics), production, Distribution (economics), distribution and trade, as well as Consumption (economics), consumption of Goods (economics), goods and Service (economics), services. In general, it is ...

, when assets trade at a price that far exceeds an asset's intrinsic value due to speculation

In linguistics

Speculative mood Speculative mood (abbreviated ) is an epistemic grammatical mood found in some languages, which indicates that the utterance In spoken language analysis, an utterance is a continuous piece of speech, by one person, before or after which there ...

, a grammatical mood found in some languages *

Speculative grammarians The Modistae (Latin for Modists), also known as the speculative grammarians, were the members of a school of grammarian philosophy known as Modism or speculative grammar, active in northern France, Germany, England, and Denmark in the 13th and 14t ...

, members of a school of grammarian philosophy known as Modism, active in Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries *''

Speculative Grammarian ''Speculative Grammarian'' (often referred to as ''SpecGram'') is the self-described "premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics". It is a parody science journal, similar in nature to the '' Ann ...

'', a parody science journal

In philosophy

Speculative philosophy Speculative philosophy is philosophy that seeks to reflect on all aspects of human experience to construct a comprehensive view of reality. Its aim is to integrate the insights from various domains into a unified understanding of existence. Histori ...

, an aspect of Continental philosophy * Speculative realism, a movement in contemporary philosophy *

Speculative reason The modern division of philosophy into theoretical philosophy and practical philosophyImmanuel Kant, ''Lectures on Ethics'', Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 41 ("On Universal Practical Philosophy"). Original text: Immanuel Kant, ''Kant’s G ...

, theoretical as opposed to practical thought

Other uses

Speculative damages Speculative damages are damages claimed by a plaintiff for losses that may occur in the future, but are highly improbable. They can not be used as a basis for recovery in tort or contract cases. Example: A plaintiff claims the tortfeasor's failure ...

, in law, damages claimed by a plaintiff for losses that may occur in the future *

Speculative fire Reconnaissance by fire (recon by fire), also known as speculative fire, is a warfare tactic used in which military forces may fire on likely enemy positions to provoke a reaction, which confirms the presence and the position of enemy forces. World ...

, a military tactic of firing to draw enemy fire and confirm the enemy's presence *

Speculative mason Freemasonry (sometimes spelled Free-Masonry) consists of fraternal groups that trace their origins to the medieval guilds of stonemasons. Freemasonry is the oldest secular fraternity in the world and among the oldest still-existing organizati ...

, in Freemasonry * Speculative Period, defined in terms of archaeological methods employed in North America between 1492 and 1840