premonition
/ˌpriːməˈnɪʃən/
premonition means A clairvoyant or clairaudient experience, such as a dream, which resonates with some event in the future. It carries an Arena rating of 1517, earned across 2 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, premonition ranks #574 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #1,340 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #1,409 of 17,124 for Most Sublime Words, #1,769 of 17,131 for Scariest Words.
premonition is pronounced /ˌpriːməˈnɪʃən/.
Why “premonition” is a great word
A foreboding or intuitive sense, often arising from a dream or sudden vision, that a specific event—typically unwelcome—is about to occur. From Anglo-Norman *premunition*, from Ecclesiastical Latin *praemonitiōnem* ("a forewarning"), from Latin *praemonitus*, past participle of *praemoneō* ("to forewarn"), from *prae-* ("before") + *moneō* ("to warn"), first attested c. 1533. Unlike a "prediction" (a logical forecast based on evidence) or a "warning" (an explicit notice from an external source), a premonition is an internal, visceral knowledge, a private shiver in the soul's climate. It is the unexplained dread that halts your foot on the stair, the oppressive weight of a dream that lingers past waking, or the sudden, chilling certainty that the ringing phone bears bad news—knowledge without proof, the mind's stubborn insistence that time has leaked backward into the present.
Etymology
First use appears c. 1533. From Anglo-Norman premunition, from Ecclesiastical Latin praemonitiōnem (“a forewarning”), form of praemonitiō, from Latin praemonitus, past participle of praemoneō, from prae (“before”) (English pre-) + moneō (“to warn”) (from which English monitor). Compare Germanic forewarning.
noun
- A clairvoyant or clairaudient experience, such as a dream, which resonates with some event in the future.
- A strong intuition that something is about to happen (usually something negative, but not exclusively).e.g.“The sinister face of Dr. Bauerstein recurred to me unpleasantly. A vague suspicion of everyone and everything filled my mind. Just for a moment I had a premonition of approaching evil.” — 1920, Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, London: Pan Books, published 1954, page 17:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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