Today’s word of the day, thanks again to Merriam-Webster, is conjecture. Conjecture can be either a noun or a verb. As a noun, it means “the formation or expression of an opinion or theory without sufficient evidence for proof” or “an opinion or theory so formed or expressed; guess; speculation” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/conjecture). As a verb, it means “to conclude or suppose from grounds or evidence insufficient to ensure reliability” (transitive) or “to form conjectures” (intransitive) (ibid.). M-W calls it “a formal synonym of the verb guess” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day). I suppose it is “formal” because an “expert” would use conjecture when they really just mean guess: instead of “I guess my calculations were wrong,” “It is my conjecture that the calculus used in the determination of the probable results may have included some unexpected inaccuracies.”

M-W explains the difference between guess and conjecture at some length: “Conjecturing—forming an idea or opinion with some amount of guesswork—usually involves more than simply throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks, but that’s the gist, and with good etymological reason: conjecture comes ultimately from the Latin verb conicere, which means, literally, ‘to throw together.’ To conjecture is to make an educated guess rather than a stab in the dark; it involves piecing together bits of information to come to a plausible conclusion, as in ‘scientists conjecturing about the cause of the disease.’ As such, conjecture tends to show up in formal contexts rather than informal ones, though we reckon one could conjecture if their spaghetti is perfectly cooked based on the amount of time it has been boiling, and on what has worked in the past. (Nota bene: throwing it at the wall doesn’t work!)” (ibid.). Nota bene: “nota bene” is Latin and it means “note well: it is used, especially in academic papers, when the author wants to reader to pay special attention to something.)

The noun form of conjecture entered the language in the “late 14c., ‘interpretation of signs, dreams, and omens,’ also ‘a supposing, a surmising,’ from Old French conjecture ‘surmise, guess,’ or directly from Latin coniectura ‘conclusion, interpretation, guess, inference,’ literally ‘a casting together (of facts, etc.),’ from coniectus, past participle of conicere ‘to throw together,’ from assimilated form of com ‘together’ (see con-) + iacere  ‘to throw’ (from PIE root *ye- ‘to throw, impel’).
“Sense of ‘an unverified supposition’ is from 1520s; that of ‘act of forming of opinion without proof’ is from 1530s” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=conjecture).

The verb form came into English in the “early 15c., ‘infer, predict, form (an opinion or notion) upon probabilities or slight evidence,’ from conjecture (n.) or from verbs in Medieval Latin and Old French. Middle English had also the parallel forms conjecte (n.), conjecten (v.)” (ibid.). What I especially like about the etymology is that the first meaning of conjecture seems to have related to fortune telling. It seems to me that a lot of experts, in a variety of fields, are doing nothing more than fortune telling when they make conjectures about the future, like the scientists who predicted that by 2014 Boston’s climate would be like Charlotte’s and New England would see no more snow.

On this date in 1772, Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, most famous or infamous for overthrowing her own husband, Peter III, and for her promiscuity, but worthy of fame for fostering the Enlightenment in Russia, ended the tax on beards. This tax had been imposed upon the men of Russia in 1698 by Peter the Great. According to Wikipedia, Peter imposed this tax upon Russian men “as part of an effort to bring Russian society in line with Western European models. To enforce the ban on beards, the tsar empowered police to forcibly and publicly shave those who refused to pay the tax. Resistance to going clean shaven was widespread with many believing that it was a religious requirement for a man to wear a beard, and the Russian Orthodox Church declared being clean-shaven as blasphemous (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beard_tax).

Men who paid the tax carried a beard token which changed over the years of the tax. The actual tax varied depending upon the status of the man: wealthy merchants were required to pay 100 rubles per year, not-so-wealthy merchants, other townspeople, and “those associated with the Imperial Court, military, or government” (ibid.) were required to pay 60 rubles per year, people who lived in Moscow paid 30 rubles per year, and peasants paid two kopecs every time they entered a city. Now, I have tried to find reliable information about what kind of pay people earned in 18^th century Russia, but one Quora response says that the average peasant wage in the late 19^th century was 10 to 15 rubles per month (https://www.quora.com/How-long-could-a-Russian-peasant-live-on-their-salary-in-Russia-back-in-the-day). There are 100 kopeks in a ruble. So two kopecs would not be that much, I suppose. On the other hand, 60 rubles might have been a city dweller’s monthly wage or more—a pretty stiff tax.

The beard tax was not a financial windfall: “The tax raised an average of 3,588 rubles annually from 1705 to 1708. However, from a financial standpoint, the tax was unsuccessful due both to the relatively low number of people unwilling to shave their beards and an overestimation of the ability of the Russian state to administer and collect the tax” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beard_tax). But it may have accomplished its main goal, which was, apparently to get Russian men to look more Western European. Of course, it may also have been a way for Peter to antagonize the Russian Orthodox Church, which believed that shaving a beard was apostasy. Peter did not require priests to shave their beards.

So after 74 years of Peter’s beard tax, Catherine did away with it. Perhaps she wanted to improve relations with the Church. Perhaps all the men had already shaved their beards. Or perhaps she decided that it was not the place of the monarch to tell people what they should look like. My own conjecture, based on my knowledge of the behavior of kings and queens historically, is that the last one is probably not the right answer.

Today’s image is “A famous bit of lyubok propaganda calling for beard cropping” (https://russianlife.com/magazine/january-february-2022/peters-war-on-facial-hair/).