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What is the difference between to presume and to assume, as in "I presume you'll be at the party" vs. "I assume you'll be at the party"? | ||
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In that particular context, nothing I can see. But for me, as a mathematician, 'presume' has some factual meat behind the prediction, whereas we can assume absolutely anything at all. Assume I am the Pope; assume also I have four heads, and every head needs to be covered by a mitre, and that no blue mitre can cover more than one head at once, whereas a purple mitre can cover two, and a crimson mitre can cover three. Given these assumptions, we can work out what logically follows as the possible combinations of mitres that would suit my needs. | |||
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Shu, your question interests me. I did some research and found a pretty good (or so it seems to me) explanation of the difference between "presume" and "assume" at Grammatically Correct. This part of the text made it clearest to me: "Hank presumes he’s the smartest one at the conference...Hank assumes he's the smartest one at the conference. Either answer will work, but each word creates a different attitude for Hank. If he presumes, we think he's overconfident or even arrogant. If he assumes, we ascribe a more humble attitude to him." I was getting pretty comfortable with that until I began to wonder What if a presumption is made about a positive trait belonging to someone else? In other words, if I say that I presume Hank to be the smartest person at the conference, surely that would not make me arrogant??? Okay, folks, have at it! | |||
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I happened to come across a realistic example of this just this morning. It confirmed the idea that presumption is a kind of belief and is backed by evidence, whereas assumption is more a kind of action (if you distinguish them). I had changed phone providers to a cheaper one so I presumed I didn't need to keep dialling the special access code to get the other one... it was a reasonable presumption, but I wasn't prepared to risk it and pay old-provider prices, so I wasn't going to assume it (that is, act on the assumption). | |||
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