English Dictionary

PROPHETIC

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does prophetic mean? 

PROPHETIC (adjective)
  The adjective PROPHETIC has 1 sense:

1. foretelling events as if by supernatural interventionplay

  Familiarity information: PROPHETIC used as an adjective is very rare.


 Dictionary entry details 


PROPHETIC (adjective)


Sense 1

Meaning:

Foretelling events as if by supernatural intervention

Synonyms:

prophetic; prophetical

Context example:

words that proved prophetic

Similar:

adumbrative; foreshadowing; prefigurative (indistinctly prophetic)

apocalyptic; apocalyptical; revelatory (prophetic of devastation or ultimate doom)

clairvoyant; precognitive; second-sighted (foreseeing the future)

Delphic; oracular (obscurely prophetic)

divinatory; mantic; sibyllic; sibylline; vatic; vatical (resembling or characteristic of a prophet or prophecy)

fateful; foreboding; portentous (ominously prophetic)

precursory; premonitory (warning of future misfortune)

predictive; prognostic; prognosticative (of or relating to prediction; having value for making predictions)

Antonym:

unprophetic (not prophetic; not foreseeing correctly)

Derivation:

prophecy (knowledge of the future (usually said to be obtained from a divine source))

prophecy (a prediction uttered under divine inspiration)

prophet (an authoritative person who divines the future)

prophet (someone who speaks by divine inspiration; someone who is an interpreter of the will of God)


 Context examples 


"Anything more?" asked Laurie, finding it hard to listen patiently to this prophetic burst.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

You may have vivid, prophetic dreams or feel highly intuitive about certain people that are coming into your life.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

Also were there shaking of heads and prophetic mutterings, and the women looked pityingly at Ikeega, and her face was grave and sad.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

As the period fixed for our marriage drew nearer, whether from cowardice or a prophetic feeling, I felt my heart sink within me.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

I know him, said the Old Soldier, fanning herself, in a sort of calm prophetic agony, and I know he'll die there, sooner than he'll overturn the Doctor's plans.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Thus spoke my prophetic soul, as, torn by remorse, horror, and despair, I beheld those I loved spend vain sorrow upon the graves of William and Justine, the first hapless victims to my unhallowed arts.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

My mother was sitting by the fire, but poorly in health, and very low in spirits, looking at it through her tears, and desponding heavily about herself and the fatherless little stranger, who was already welcomed by some grosses of prophetic pins, in a drawer upstairs, to a world not at all excited on the subject of his arrival; my mother, I say, was sitting by the fire, that bright, windy March afternoon, very timid and sad, and very doubtful of ever coming alive out of the trial that was before her, when, lifting her eyes as she dried them, to the window opposite, she saw a strange lady coming up the garden.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

And now, indeed, I began to think that in my old association of her with the stained-glass window in the church, a prophetic foreshadowing of what she would be to me, in the calamity that was to happen in the fullness of time, had found a way into my mind.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)



 Learn English with... Proverbs 
"If you can't be good, be careful." (English proverb)

"The more cowherds there are, the worse the cows are looked after" (Breton proverb)

"The most praised form of fluency is silence when talk isn't wise." (Arabic proverb)

"Lies have twisted limbs." (Corsican proverb)



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