Word.ws English Dictionary

self-fulfilling prophecy

self-fulfilling prophecy noun: a prediction that, by being voiced, causes itself to come true.

Noun

self-fulfilling prophecy (plural self-fulfilling prophecies)

  1. A prediction that, by being voiced, causes itself to come true.
    • Whether or not we believe in astrology is irrelevant; the question is, did the Magdalenians? If so, then in a self-fulfilling prophecy they may have been organizing their lives according to a religious belief system, and not simply an economic or ecological one.1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 130
    • Operator Abellio ScotRail doubled the Mon-Sat service from one train in each direction to two from May 2019 - it being something of a self-fulfilling prophecy that if you lay on trains, people might use them.2022 January 26, Stephen Roberts, “Top of the stops: our least used stations”, in RAIL, number 949, page 56

self-fulfilling prophecy meaning in Vietnamese

self-fulfilling prophecy in Vietnamese

A prediction that, by being voiced, causes itself to come true
lời tiên tri tự hoàn thành

Forms of self-fulfilling prophecy

pluralself-fulfilling prophecies

Origin of self-fulfilling prophecy

Coined by sociologist Robert K. Merton.

Questions about self-fulfilling prophecy

What does self-fulfilling prophecy mean?
Self-fulfilling prophecy means a prediction that, by being voiced, causes itself to come true.
What is self-fulfilling prophecy in Vietnamese?
Self-fulfilling prophecy in Vietnamese is lời tiên tri tự hoàn thành. See Self-fulfilling prophecy meaning in Vietnamese.
What part of speech is self-fulfilling prophecy?
Self-fulfilling prophecy is a noun.
What is the plural of self-fulfilling prophecy?
The plural of self-fulfilling prophecy is self-fulfilling prophecies.

Words near self-fulfilling prophecy in the dictionary

  1. self-focusses
  2. self-focussing
  3. self-formed
  4. self-fulfilling
  5. self-fulfilling prophecies
  6. self-fulfilling prophecy
  7. self-fulfillment
  8. self-fulfillments
  9. self-fund
  10. self-funded
  11. self-funding

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: self-fulfilling prophecy (page history and authors). 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.

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Cite this entry: “self-fulfilling prophecy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/self-fulfilling_prophecy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.