1. Belief about (or mental picture of) the future
   "He had high expectations for his new job";
   - outlook, prospect
    
2. The feeling that something is about to happen
   "There was a palpable sense of expectation in the air before the concert"
    
3. A standard of behaviour or achievement regarded as necessary or appropriate
   "The expectations placed on young athletes"; "Meeting deadlines is a basic job expectation"
    
4. (statistics) the sum of the values of a random variable divided by the number of values
   "The expectation of 3, 7, and 11 is 7";
   - arithmetic mean, first moment, expected value, average

Derived forms: expectations

Type of: average, belief, feeling, mean, mean value

Encyclopedia: Expectation