Definition of PRESCIENT

Did You Know?

If you know the origin of "science," you already know half the story of "prescience." "Science" comes from the Latin verb scire, which means "to know" and which is the source of many English words ("conscience," "conscious," and "omniscience," just to name a few). "Prescience" comes from the Latin verb praescire, which means "to know beforehand." "Praescire" joins the verb "scire" with the prefix prae-, a predecessor of "pre-." A lesser-known "scire"-derived word is "nescience." Nescience means "ignorance" and comes from "scire" plus "ne-," which means "not" in Latin.

Examples of prescience in a Sentence

He predicted their response with amazing prescience. Her prescience as an investor is impressive.

Recent Examples on the Web The film's prescience is as eerie as its conclusions are disturbing. — Thomas Page, CNN, "TIFF 2020 kicks off a strange start to the Oscars race," 18 Sep. 2020 The prescience of Bergstrom and West’s methods now haunts us every day in the data chicanery underlying the Covid-19 catastrophe in the United States. — C. Brandon Ogbunu, Wired, "Calling Bullshit Skewers the World’s BS Merchants," 4 Aug. 2020 Besides stars Lathan and Epps, Prince-Bythewood’s eye for casting demonstrated an uncanny prescience. — Sonaiya Kelley, Los Angeles Times, "20 years later, the cast and crew of ‘Love & Basketball’ consider its legacy in an oral history," 21 Apr. 2020 For weeks, venture capitalists and founders had been tweeting about their own prescience, attributing their cautionary measures to familiarity with the sort of exponential growth curves exhibited by successful startups. — Anna Wiener, The New Yorker, "San Francisco Shelters in Place," 20 Mar. 2020 In retrospect, despite the Sentinel’s prescience, journalistic carelessness caused the project to backfire, and thus miss its target. — Gerald Posner, Wired, "The Mom Who Took on Purdue Pharma for Its OxyContin Marketing," 23 Mar. 2020 Bikini Kill today see parallels, as well; acknowledging their activism’s prescience — and its endurance — with a reunion tour. — oregonlive, "Live music in Portland: March blooms with 23 must-see concerts," 27 Feb. 2020 If there’s such a thing as accidental prescience, well, Milbury might have had that working in his favor Wednesday. — Chad Finn, BostonGlobe.com, "We ask NBC’s Mike Milbury about the Bruins’ Stanley Cup chances," 8 Feb. 2020 Her relationships with what became his inner circle (Rudy Guiliani, Anthony Scaramucci, and Kimberly Gilfoyle are also pals) have led to a recent flurry of interest from the press, who don’t know whether to credit her with Cassandra-like prescience. — Sadie Stein, Town & Country, "Cindy Adams, New York's Queen of Gossip, Keeps Everyone's Secrets," 5 Dec. 2019

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'prescience.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.