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.