'Suspect' is Latin for 'look up from below' — wary watching from beneath. Mistrust in a glance.
To believe something is likely or possible, especially something dishonest or wrong; a person believed to have committed a crime; regarded with suspicion or distrust.
From Latin 'suspectus,' past participle of 'suspicere' (to look up at from below, to gaze at with the uneasy mixture of admiration and distrust that comes from looking up at a looming figure), composed of 'sub-' (under, from below, up from beneath) + 'specere' (to look, to observe, to see, to examine). Proto-Indo-European *speḱ- (to observe, to look, to spy out) underlies 'specere' and produced one of the most productive word-families in Latin and Greek: Latin 'specere' → 'spectacle' (something worth looking at), 'inspect' (to look into), 'respect' (to look back at), 'expect' (to look out for), 'aspect' (the side looked at), 'conspicuous' (visible to all lookers), 'species' (a look, an appearance → the biological category named by its visible form), 'special,' 'specimen' (something looked at as an example), 'speculate' (to observe like a spy from a high point — 'specula' was a watchtower), and 'speculum' (mirror — something for looking into); Greek 'skeptesthai' (σκέπτεσθαι, to look, to examine carefully → 'sceptic' — one who looks carefully before accepting
The English word 'suspicion' and the French word 'soupçon' (a tiny amount, as in 'a soupçon of garlic') are the same word. French 'soupçon' literally means 'suspicion' — the culinary sense comes from using just enough of an ingredient to arouse suspicion of its presence without being certain.
Words closest in meaning, ranked by similarity