expectation

Meaning

Noun

• The act or state of expecting or looking forward to an event as about to happen.
• That which is expected or looked for.
• The prospect of the future; grounds upon which something excellent is expected to occur; prospect of anything good to come, especially of property or rank.
• The value of any chance (as the prospect of prize or property) which depends upon some contingent event.
• The first moment; the long-run average value of a variable over many independent repetitions of an experiment.
• The arithmetic mean.
• The leaving of a disease principally to the efforts of nature to effect a cure.

Related

Similar words

• arithmetic mean; average

Origin

• From Middle French expectation, from Latin exspectātiō, from exspectō; synchronically analyzable as expect + -ation.