PRESENTIMENT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does presentiment mean? 

• PRESENTIMENT (noun)
  The noun PRESENTIMENT has 1 sense:

1. a feeling of evil to come

  Familiarity information: PRESENTIMENT used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PRESENTIMENT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A feeling of evil to come

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

boding; foreboding; premonition; presentiment

Context example:

the lawyer had a presentiment that the judge would dismiss the case

Hypernyms ("presentiment" is a kind of...):

apprehension; apprehensiveness; dread (fearful expectation or anticipation)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "presentiment"):

shadow (a premonition of something adverse)

presage (a foreboding about what is about to happen)

 Context examples 

“I have no doubt it will be a girl. I have a presentiment that it must be a girl. Now child, from the moment of the birth of this girl—”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

He had some presentiment that worthy footsteps would follow close behind him.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

She had felt an early presentiment that she should like the eldest best.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

“I had a presentiment that you would come this evening. Think better of it, dear! Trust me again, and you will never have cause to regret it.”

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I never laughed at presentiments in my life, because I have had strange ones of my own.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Catherine, meanwhile, undisturbed by presentiments of such an evil, or of any evil at all, except that of having but a short set to dance down, enjoyed her usual happiness with Henry Tilney, listening with sparkling eyes to everything he said; and, in finding him irresistible, becoming so herself.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

I trembled from head to foot; I felt a presentiment of who it was and wished to rouse one of the peasants who dwelt in a cottage not far from mine; but I was overcome by the sensation of helplessness, so often felt in frightful dreams, when you in vain endeavour to fly from an impending danger, and was rooted to the spot.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

“I tell you I have a presentiment that it must be a girl,” returned Miss Betsey.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I have a presentiment that you are going to propose, Ned. I do wish you wouldn't; for things are so much nicer as they are.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Presentiments are strange things! and so are sympathies; and so are signs; and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity has not yet found the key.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)