prescient
/ˈprɛsɪənt
/adjective
Having or showing knowledge of events before they take place: a prescient warning...
- It makes no mention at all of White's passionate and prescient warnings.
- We take no pleasure in that, and we had to endure some criticism for making such claims, but the warnings proved prescient.
- He came to the fore with a thundering and prescient prediction of the break-up of Britain, coinciding with the Silver Jubilee.
Synonyms
prophetic, predictive, visionary;
psychic, clairvoyant;
far-seeing, far-sighted, with foresight, prognostic, divinatory, oracular, sibylline, apocalyptic, fateful, revelatory;
insightful, intuitive, perceptive, percipient
rare foreknowing, previsional, vatic, mantic, vaticinal, vaticinatory, prognosticative, augural, adumbrative, fatidic, fatidical, haruspical, pythonic
Derivatives
presciently
- But he adds, presciently: ‘I have a strange feeling that all this is important.’
- They understand that this president, or any president, will not always judge future events presciently or execute policy flawlessly.
- The start was the high point, but the speech did a number of smart things, as one of Clinton's speechwriters presciently described a few days ago.
Origin
Early 17th century: from Latin praescient- 'knowing beforehand', from the verb praescire, from prae 'before' + scire 'know'.