anticipation

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The act of anticipating.
2. n. An expectation.
3. n. Foreknowledge, intuition, and presentiment.
4. n. The use or assignment of funds, especially from a trust fund, before they are legitimately available for use.
5. n. Music Introduction on a weak beat of one note of a new chord before the previous chord is resolved.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act of being before another in doing something; the act of taking up, placing, or considering something beforehand, before the proper time, or out of the natural order; prior action.
2. n. Foretaste; realization in advance; previous view or impression of what is to happen afterward; expectation; hope: as, the anticipation of the joys of heaven.
3. n. Previous notion; preconceived opinion, produced in the mind before the truth is known; slight previous impression; forecast.
4. n. In logic, the term used since Cicero (Latin anticipatio) to translate the “prolepsis” (πρόληψις) of the Epicureans and Stoics. It denotes any general notion considered as resulting from the action of memory upon experiences more or less similar. Such a notion is called an anticipation because, once possessed, it is called up in its entirety by a mere suggestion. It thus acquaints us with what has not yet been perceived, by a reference to past perceptions. Hence, with later philosophers, the word denotes knowledge drawn from the mind, independently of experience; the knowledge of axioms or first principles. With Bacon an anticipation of nature is a hasty generalization or hypothesis: opposed to an interpretation of nature. In Kant's philosophy, anticipation is the a priori knowledge that every sensation must have degrees of intensive quantity.
5. n. In medicine, the occurrence in the human body of any phenomenon, morbid or natural, before the usual time.
6. n. In music, the introduction into a chord of one or more of the component notes of the chord which follows, producing a passing discord.
7. n. In rhetoric, prolepsis. Synonyms Antepast, preconception, expectation, prevision, foresight, presentiment.

Wiktionary

1. n. The act of anticipating, taking up, placing, or considering something beforehand, or before the proper time in natural order.
2. n. The eagerness associated with waiting for something to occur.
3. n. Prepayment of a debt, generally in order to pay less interest.
4. n. Prolepsis.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act of anticipating, taking up, placing, or considering something beforehand, or before the proper time in natural order.
2. n. Previous view or impression of what is to happen; instinctive prevision; foretaste; antepast.
3. n. Hasty notion; intuitive preconception.
4. n. The commencing of one or more tones of a chord with or during the chord preceding, forming a momentary discord.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. anticipating with confidence of fulfillment
2. n. something expected (as on the basis of a norm)
3. n. the act of predicting (as by reasoning about the future)
4. n. an expectation