'Prescience' means the ability to know or anticipate future events; foresight, derived from Latin roots meaning 'to know beforehand'.
Prescience means foreknowledge of events or the ability to anticipate the course of events; foresight. It comes from the Latin 'praescire', meaning 'to know beforehand', combining 'prae-' (before) and 'scire' (to know).
| Word | prescience |
|---|---|
| Date | February 13, 2010 |
| Type | noun |
| Syllables | PRESH-ee-unss |
| Etymology | If you know the origin of "science," you already know half the story of "prescience." "Science" comes from the Latin verb "scire," which means "to know" and which is the source of many English words ("conscience," "conscious," and "omniscience," just to name a few). "Prescience" comes from the Latin verb "praescire," which means "to know beforehand." "Praescire" joins the verb "scire" with the prefix "prae-," a predecessor of "pre-." A lesser-known "scire"-derived word is "nescience." "Nescience" means "ignorance" and comes from "scire" plus "ne-," which means "not" in Latin. |
| Examples | Stacy had the prescience to know that the stock’s value wasn’t going to remain high forever, so she sold it before it decreased. |
| Definition | a : foreknowledge of events: b : divine omniscience c : human anticipation of the course of events : foresight |
Tags: wordoftheday::noun
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