prescient
Syllables: pre·scient/ˈpɹɛsiənt//ˈpɹɛʃ(i)ənt/
prescient adjective: exhibiting or possessing prescience: having knowledge of, or seemingly able to correctly predict, events before they take place.
Adjective
prescient (comparative more prescient, superlative most prescient)
- 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; […]1733–1734, Stephen Duck, A Poem on the Marriage of His Serene Highness the Prince of Orange with Ann Princess-royal of Great Britain. […], London: Printed for Weaver Bickerton […], →OCLC, page 7
- Mean time the king, aſtoniſh'd at the ſign, / Haſtes to conſult his præſcient ſire divine.1753, Virgil, “Virgil’s Æneid. The Seventh Book.”, in Christopher Pitt, transl., edited by [Joseph Warton], The Works of Virgil, in Latin and English. […], volume III, London: Printed for R[obert]...
- Synonyms:
- clairvoyant, foreknowing, foreseeing, prescious, prescientific, prevoyant
- Antonyms:
- unforeseeing
prescient meaning in Hindi, Urdu and Malayalam
prescient in Hindi
- exhibiting or possessing prescience
- दूरदर्शी dūrdarśī
prescient in Urdu
- پیش بینی, دور اندیشی, غیب دانی
prescient in Malayalam
- predictive, prophetic, visionary
- ദീർഘദർശിയായ, ഭവിഷ്യത്ജ്ഞാനമുള്ള, ക്രാന്തദർശി, ദെെവജ്ഞ, കടന്നുകാണുന്ന, ദർശനാത്മകസിദ്ധിയുള്ള
Examples of prescient in a sentence
- The kind sorrowful blue eyes looked at me for a moment with the prescient sadness of a coming and a long farewell.1859 November 26 – 1860 August 25, [William] Wilkie Collins, “The Narrative of Walter Hartright, of Clement’s Inn, London”, in The Woman in...
- Members opposite seem to be prescient; they seem to know what I am going to say before I have said it.1960 August 24, Roy Emile Jack, “Business of the House—Urgency”, in Parliamentary Debates (Hansard): Fourth Session, Thirty-second...
- It proved to be a prescient quip, as the home side had to toil for long periods, struggling to lay a glove on their stylish opponents.2018 January 28, Dafydd Pritchard, “Cardiff City 1 – 1 Manchester City”, in BBC Sport, archived from the original on 17 Mar 2018:
- While it forecast that a pandemic would begin in 2023, as opposed to 2020, its warnings about travel restrictions, economic distress and isolation were prescient.2025 September 26, Julian E. Barnes, Helene Cooper, “Gabbard Ends Intelligence Report on Future Threats to U.S.”, in The New York Times...
Synonyms of prescient
Antonyms
Forms of prescient
| comparative | more prescient |
|---|---|
| superlative | most prescient |
| alternative form (obsolete) | præscient |
| alternative form (obsolete) | praescient |
Origin of prescient
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”).
Words formed from prescient
Questions about prescient
- What does prescient mean?
- Prescient means exhibiting or possessing prescience: having knowledge of, or seemingly able to correctly predict, events before they take place.
- What is prescient in Hindi?
- Prescient in Hindi is दूरदर्शी (dūrdarśī). See Prescient meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use prescient in a sentence?
- The kind sorrowful blue eyes looked at me for a moment with the prescient sadness of a coming and a long farewell.
- What part of speech is prescient?
- Prescient is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce prescient?
- Prescient is pronounced /ˈpɹɛsiənt/ (UK).
Words near prescient in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: prescient (page history and authors); prescient (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); prescient (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-uk-prescient.ogg, En-us-prescient.ogg.
Cite this entry: “prescient.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/prescient. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.