Speculative mood (

abbreviated An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...

) is an

epistemic Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the Outline of philosophy, branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, an ...

grammatical mood In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used for signaling modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying (for example, a statement o ...

found in some

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

s, which indicates that the

utterance In spoken language analysis, an utterance is a continuous piece of speech, often beginning and ending with a clear pause. In the case of oral languages, it is generally, but not always, bounded by silence. Utterances do not exist in written langu ...

is based on speculation of the speaker, and not necessarily known to be the case. For example, "The butler could have been the killer."

References

Grammatical moods {{Ling-morph-stub