Prescient
adj ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Exhibiting or possessing prescience: having knowledge of, or seemingly able to correctly predict, events before they take place.
"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; […]"
- 1 perceiving the significance of events before they occur wordnet
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"In India, you can find many saints in the Himalayan region who could be called prescient."
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”).
Related phrases
More for "prescient"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.