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The word guess, popularly supposed to be a Yankeeism, is as old as the English language, not only in its true and specified sense, but in use for “think” or “believe.” Wycliffe, in his translation of the Bible, says, “To whom shall I gesse this generacion lyk?” Chaucer frequently uses it in the modern sense, as, for example, in describing Emelie in “The Knighte’s Tale:”

“Hire yelwe here was broided in a tresse

Behind hire back, a yerde long, I gesse.”

Spenser uses it in a similar way in the “Fairie Queene.” Bishop Jewell, Bishop Hale, John Locke, and other sixteenth century writers, left well known passages in which it occurs. Shakespeare, as every student of the great dramatist knows, used it repeatedly. Examples of such use may also be found in some modern English novels.