Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The act of expecting or foreseeing something; expectation or presentiment.
  • noun An expectation.
  • noun Action taken in order to prevent or counteract something.
  • noun The use or assignment of funds, especially from a trust fund, before they are legitimately available for use.
  • noun Music Introduction on a weak beat of one note of a new chord before the previous chord is resolved.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun 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.
  • noun Foretaste; realization in advance; previous view or impression of what is to happen afterward; expectation; hope: as, the anticipation of the joys of heaven.
  • noun Previous notion; preconceived opinion, produced in the mind before the truth is known; slight previous impression; forecast.
  • noun In logic, the term used since Cicero (Latin anticipatio) to translate the “prolepsis” (πρόληψις) of the Epicureans and Stoics.
  • noun In medicine, the occurrence in the human body of any phenomenon, morbid or natural, before the usual time.
  • noun In music, the introduction into a chord of one or more of the component notes of the chord which follows, producing a passing discord.
  • noun In rhetoric, prolepsis.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

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

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The act of anticipating, taking up, placing, or considering something beforehand, or before the proper time in natural order.
  • noun The eagerness associated with waiting for something to occur.
  • noun finance Prepayment of a debt, generally in order to pay less interest.
  • noun rhetoric Prolepsis.
  • noun music a non-harmonic tone that is lower or higher than a note in the previous chord and a unison to a note in the next chord
  • noun obsolete Hasty notion; intuitive preconception.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun anticipating with confidence of fulfillment
  • noun something expected (as on the basis of a norm)
  • noun the act of predicting (as by reasoning about the future)
  • noun an expectation

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin anticipatio; compare with French anticipation.

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Examples

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  • "Well," said Pooh, "what I like best -- " and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called.

    -- Winnie the Pooh

    September 24, 2009