Definitions

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

  • transitive verb To conceive an image or a picture of, especially as a future possibility.
  • transitive verb To consider or regard in a certain way.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To look in the face of; face; view; regard; hence, to apprehend directly; perceive by intuition: sometimes, as a term of philosophy, equivalent to intuit.

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

  • transitive verb rare To look in the face of; to apprehend; to regard.

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

  • verb To conceive or see something within one's mind. To imagine or envision.

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

  • verb form a mental image of something that is not present or that is not the case

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French envisager : Old French en-, in; see en– + Old French visage, face; see visage.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French envisager, from en ("in") + visage ("visage"); see visage.

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Examples

Comments

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  • Synonym for envision.

    July 10, 2007

  • Envisage and envision have subtly different meanings. Both mean to visualize, but envisage is generally used with real things, and envision is generally used with hypothetical things. Good explanation at link below:

    http://www.grammarist.com/usage/envision-envisage/

    June 24, 2011