prescient
/ˈpɹɛʃ(i)ənt/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.66 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
3
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Exhibiting or possessing prescience: having knowledge of, or seemingly able to correctly predict, events before they take place.
Example Sentences
- "And if the præſcient Muſes guide my Lay, / Or, future Secrets, Phœbus can diſplay, / The Day ſhall ſhine diſtinguiſh'd from the reſt, / That Anna dignify'd, and Hymen bleſt; […]"
- "Mean time the king, aſtoniſh'd at the ſign, / Haſtes to conſult his præſcient ſire divine."
- "Benignant Heaven, præscient and kind, / Made man for toil, and left sweet Sleep behind, / To nerve the arm which labour had unstrung— […]"
- "It seems that human nature, when its original habits are cultivated and attended to, possesses something upon the same occasion of that prescient foreboding, which announces the approaching tempest to the inferior ranks of creation."
- "The kind sorrowful blue eyes looked at me for a moment with the prescient sadness of a coming and a long farewell."
- "Members opposite seem to be prescient; they seem to know what I am going to say before I have said it."
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Latin praesciēns (“foreknowing; foretelling, predicting”), present participle of) Latin praesciō (“to foreknow”), from prae- (prefix meaning ‘before; in front’) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *preh₂- (“before; in front”)) + sciō (“to know, understand; to have knowledge of”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *skey- (“to dissect; to split”)). The word is cognate with Middle French prescient (modern French prescient (“prescient”)), Italian presciente (“prescient”). By surface analysis, pre- (“earlier in time, beforehand”) + scient (“knowing, aware”).
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *preh₂-, praesciō, *skey-
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈpɹɛʃ(i)ənt/
- British English: /ˈpɹɛsiənt/
Inflected Forms
more prescient (comparative)
most prescient (superlative)
præscient (alternative, obsolete)
praescient (alternative, obsolete)