Speculative may refer to:

In arts and entertainment

Speculative art (disambiguation) Speculative art can refer to: *Gambling * Investment **Investing in fine art *Fantasy art *Science fiction art *Alchemy See also *Futurology * Futurism * Surrealism * Absurdism *Dada *Speculative poetry Speculative poetry is a genre of poetry t ...

Speculative fiction Speculative fiction is a term that has been used with a variety of (sometimes contradictory) meanings. The broadest interpretation is as a category of fiction encompassing genres with elements that do not exist in reality, recorded history, na ...

, which includes elements created out of human imagination, such as the science fiction and fantasy genres ** Speculative Fiction Group, a Persian literature group whose website which is named Fantasy Academy ** Speculative poetry, a genre of poetry that focuses on fantastic, science fictional and mythological themes *

Speculative screenplay A spec script, also known as a speculative screenplay, is a non-commissioned and unsolicited screenplay. It is usually written by a screenwriter who hopes to have the script optioned and eventually purchased by a producer, production company, or s ...

, or spec script, a non-commissioned, unsolicited screenplay *

The Speculative Society The Speculative Society is a Scottish Enlightenment society dedicated to public speaking and literary composition, founded in 1764. It was mainly, but not exclusively, an Edinburgh University student organisation. The formal purpose of the Societ ...

, a Scottish Enlightenment society dedicated to public speaking and literary composition, founded in 1764

In computing

* Speculative execution, in computer systems is doing work, the result of which may not be needed. This performance optimization technique is used in pipelined processors and other systems *

Speculative multithreading Thread Level Speculation (TLS), also known as Speculative Multithreading, or Speculative Parallelization, is a technique to speculatively execute a section of computer code that is anticipated to be executed later in parallel with the normal exec ...

, a dynamic parallelization technique that depends on out-of-order execution to achieve speedup on multiprocessor CPUs. It is a kind of speculative execution that occurs at the thread level as opposed to the instruction level

In economics

Speculation In finance, speculation is the purchase of an asset (a commodity, good (economics), goods, or real estate) with the hope that it will become more valuable shortly. (It can also refer to short sales in which the speculator hopes for a decline i ...

, the practice of engaging in risky transactions in an attempt to profit from fluctuations in market value ** Speculative attack, denoting precipitous acquisition of assets by previously inactive speculators ** Speculative demand, a demand for financial assets that is not dictated by real transactions such as trade or financing **

Speculative development Real estate development, or property development, is a business process, encompassing activities that range from the renovation and re-lease of existing buildings to the purchase of raw land and the sale of developed land or parcels to others. ...

, in real estate **

Speculative grade In finance, a high-yield bond (non-investment-grade bond, speculative-grade bond, or junk bond) is a bond that is rated below investment grade by credit rating agencies. These bonds have a higher risk of default or other adverse credit event ...

, a grade of bond below investment grade, having higher risk, but typically pay higher yield than better quality bonds **

Economic bubble An economic bubble (also called a speculative bubble or a financial bubble) is a period when current asset prices greatly exceed their intrinsic valuation, being the valuation that the underlying long-term fundamentals justify. Bubbles can be c ...

, when assets trade at a price that far exceeds an asset's intrinsic value due to speculation

In linguistics

* Speculative mood, a grammatical mood found in some languages * Speculative grammarians, members of a school of grammarian philosophy known as Modism, active in Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries *''

Speculative Grammarian ''Speculative Grammarian'' (often referred to as ''SpecGram'') is the self-described "premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics". It is a parody science journal, similar in nature to the '' An ...

'', a parody science journal

In philosophy

*Speculative philosophy, an aspect of Continental philosophy *

Speculative realism Speculative realism is a movement in contemporary Continental-inspired philosophy (also known as post-Continental philosophy) that defines itself loosely in its stance of metaphysical realism against its interpretation of the dominant forms of p ...

, a movement in contemporary philosophy *

Speculative reason Speculative reason, sometimes called theoretical reason or pure reason, is theoretical (or logical, deductive) thought, as opposed to practical (active, willing) thought. The distinction between the two goes at least as far back as the ancient Gr ...

, theoretical as opposed to practical thought

Other uses

Speculative damages Speculative damages are damages claimed by a plaintiff for losses that may occur in the future, but are highly improbable. They can not be used as a basis for recovery in tort or contract cases. Example: A plaintiff claims the tortfeasor's failure ...

, in law, damages claimed by a plaintiff for losses that may occur in the future *

Speculative fire Reconnaissance by fire (recon by fire), also known as speculative fire, is a warfare tactic used in which military forces may fire on likely enemy positions to provoke a reaction, which confirms the presence and the position of enemy forces. World ...

, a military tactic of firing to draw enemy fire and confirm the enemy's presence *

Speculative mason Freemasonry or Masonry refers to fraternal organisations that trace their origins to the local guilds of stonemasons that, from the end of the 13th century, regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their interaction with authorities ...

, in Freemasonry * Speculative Period, defined in terms of archaeological methods employed in North America between 1492 and 1840