Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Of or relating to prescience.
- adj. Possessing prescience.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Foreknowing; having knowledge of events before they take place.
Wiktionary
- adj. Having knowledge of events before they take place; possessing or exhibiting prescience.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Having knowledge of coming events; foreseeing; conscious beforehand.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. perceiving the significance of events before they occur
Etymologies
- From Latin praescire ("know beforehand"), from prae + scire. (Wiktionary)
- French, from Old French, from Latin praesciēns, praescient-, present participle of praescīre, to know beforehand : prae-, pre- + scīre, to know. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Whether Stephenson's vision of a totally privatized America will turn out to be equally prescient is at least one theme of Jody Freeman and Martha Minow's edited volume, Government by Contract.”
The Huffington Post: David Isenberg: Admiral Bob's Global Security: The Future of PSC?
“Buckley warned in prescient terms against what would become the Rovite heresy at the Xth Party Congress in 1976.”
“He's made some bad ones, to be sure - he was notably burned by telecom companies during the dotcom bust - but over the course of a few decades of investing, Gilder has become known as a prescient technophile.”
“Look up the word prescient, then reread the last few posts.”
“In a groundbreaking new book that Publishers Weekly has already called "prescient" -”
“In 2007, Mr. Dai gave up a manufacturing business he had run for years and switched to credit guarantee, a change of course he jokingly calls "prescient" in light of the funding plight facing small manufacturers now.”
“(Recall his prescient volume "Condi vs. Hillary," published before the 2008 Presidential election campaign.)”
“I can recall a prescient political cartoon about candidate Reagan from Pat Oliphant circa campaign 1976:”
“Few Israelis have yet publicly recalled the prescient remark of one of the fathers of modern Zionism, Chaim Weizmann: "The world will judge the Jewish state by the way it will treat the Arabs.”
“Ms. Willingham, 30, could not help but recall a prescient conversation she and her younger brother had recently.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘prescient’.
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GRE 2014
abase, abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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GRE
predilection, explicit, appeal, supplication, appealing, enchanting, ovation, pertinent, apropos, opportunely, applicable, germane and 381 more...
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of Montreal
Every time I finally decipher Kevin Barnes's song lyrics, I feel somewhat smarter.
These are strange/big/obscure words and phrases from the lyrics of the band 'of Montreal' (intentiona...southern hemisphe..., paradigm, Phaidon Press, permutation, List Christie, Gemini Tactics, eluardian, persecution complex, Himmlers, parabola, Mono Club, subconscious mass... and 132 more...
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List of Impressive Dissertation Words
Extraordinary words that Johnston and Shea might try to use while writing their dissertations.
egress, limn, effluvium, asynchronous, imbibe, opine, cognoscente, gnosis, inchoate, cathect, austerity, prescient and 1 more...
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For Summer
analogous, prestidigitation, defenestrate, crux, supercilious, sunglasses, replete, foment, anthropomorphic, iota, intrinsic, prosaic and 29 more...
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man gre
abase, abeyance, abreast, abscission, abscond, abyss, accede, accretion, acerbic, acidulous, acumen, adulterate and 483 more...
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To Be or Not To Be
Words to live by (or not)
prescient, polyglot, fatuous, phlegmatic, mendacious, pithy, ebullient, epicure, perspicacious, philistine, probity, profligate and 9 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1856 more...
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GRE
pejorative, austere, unconscionable, lissome, edify, winsome, axiom, malinger, abjure, deleterious, contumacious, peregrinate and 152 more...
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Words from Moby Dick
frigate, presumptuous, genteel, succor, hearthstone, gentry, factitious, bilious, insurgent, portent, enervate, genuflect and 303 more...
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Macbeth
ambivalence, prescient, omniscient, equivocation, soliloquy, discourse, antithesis, allusion, analogy, anthropomorphism, dramatic irony, juxtaposition and 18 more...
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Vocabulary
Words I come across while reading.
talus, echelon, onanistic, cabochon, avocation, charnel, moue, portentous, prolixity, astringent, hoary, patina and 165 more...
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BonMots
assiduous, progeny, hegemony, nascent, reticent, ephemera, zeitgeist, recalcitrant, copious, corporeal, cacaphonous, obstreperous and 108 more...
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princeton review
jubilance, obtrusive, maladjusted, prodigious, incredulous, stolidity, inured, stoicism, sidereal, boisterous, etiolated, circumscribed and 90 more...
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Stumbled Words
A list of words that I stumbled upon while reading.
penumbra, prolix, propitious, resplendence, sepulchral, Weltschmerz, apparition, brigand, probity, chalice, paroxysm, pallor and 160 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for prescient.

seanahan This is an excellent word, sounds like precious, describe foresight, or the ability to see into the future, whether figuratively or literally. Jul 7, 2007