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''prescience'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260320113731-00-⌔
prescience - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
English
Noun
prescience (usually uncountable, plural presciences)
- Knowledge of events before they take place. [from 14th c.]
- (especially) Such knowledge that is supernatural or paranormal in nature, including the prediction of things that nobody could have known by the ordinary senses.
- ✤ Synonyms: precognition, foresight (precognition sense), foreknowledge, clairvoyance, premonition, divination, prophecy, psychicness
- ✤ Coordinate term: foretelling
- ✤ God’s certain prescience of the volitions of moral agents1
- ✤ O thou, who thus the eye hast veil’d,
The book of fate so slowly given,
I thank thee, that thou hast conceal’d
From man the prescience of heaven.2- (sometimes) Such knowledge that comes from wise and thorough forethought (for example, careful planning).
- ✤ Synonym: foresight (wisdom sense)
- ✤ Near-synonym: forethought
- ✤ With prescience, the Barlows designed them to withstand a third more weight than they would be expected to bear in normal conditions - future proofing the bridge for the weight of trains we see using it today.3
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English prescience, from Old French prescience, from Latin praescientia.
Pronunciation
Printed 2026-06-28.
(echo:: @ ⌗)
Link to original Footnotes
1754, Jonathan Edwards, An Inquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions Respecting that Freedom of the Will which is supposed to be Essential to Moral Agency: ↩
1815, Lydia Sigourney, Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse, On a Sleeping Infant, page 198: ↩
2020 September 23, Paul Bigland, “The tragic tale of the Tay Bridge disaster”, in Rail, page 83: ↩
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