Premonition

//ˌpriːməˈnɪʃən// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A clairvoyant or clairaudient experience, such as a dream, which resonates with some event in the future.
  2. 2
    an early warning about a future event wordnet
  3. 3
    A strong intuition that something is about to happen (usually something negative, but not exclusively).

    "The sinister face of Dr. Bauerstein recurred to me unpleasantly. A vague suspicion of everyone and everything filled my mind. Just for a moment I had a premonition of approaching evil."

  4. 4
    a feeling of evil to come wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
forebodingforebodingforewarningadvance noticeapprehensionapprehensiveness

Example

More examples

"My premonition turned out to be right."

Etymology

First use appears c. 1533. From Anglo-Norman premunition, from Ecclesiastical Latin praemonitiōnem (“a forewarning”), form of praemonitiō, from Latin praemonitus, past participle of praemoneō, from prae (“before”) (English pre-) + moneō (“to warn”) (from which English monitor). Compare Germanic forewarning.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.