prophesy means to speak or write with divine inspiration; to act as prophet. Lexicurio rates it Distinctive — a strength score of 65 out of 100.
Why this word is great
PROPHESY — [Verb] To speak or write by divine inspiration, or to predict a future event with revelatory authority. From Middle English prophecien, partly from prophecie ("prophecy") and partly from Middle French prophecier, from prophecie ("prophecy"), tracing to Greek prophētēs, one who speaks (phēmi) before (pro) the people or a god. Unlike "predict," which implies a forecast grounded in observable data, or "foreshadow," which offers a veiled literary hint, to prophesy is to channel a certainty not your own. It is the oracle inhaling sulphurous vapors before her voice drops an octave, the stark verse scrawled on a dungeon wall, and the child in the temple speaking with a vocabulary not her own—a human instrument irrevocably claimed by the immutable script it utters.
verb
- To speak or write with divine inspiration; to act as prophet.“And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions:”
- To predict, to foretell (with or without divine inspiration).“Then I perceive that will be verified
Henry the Fifth did sometime prophesy
‘If once he come to be a cardinal,
He’ll make his cap co-equal with the crown.’”
- To foreshow; to herald; to prefigure.“Methought thy very gait did prophesy
A royal nobleness. I must embrace thee.”
- To speak out on the Bible as an expression of holy inspiration; to preach.“1646, Jeremy Taylor, Of the Liberty of Prophesying, Section 4, in Treatises of 1. The liberty of prophesying, 2. Prayer ex tempore, 3. Episcopacie: together with a sermon, London: R. Royston, 1648, p. 73,
[…] if we consider that we have no certain wayes of determining places of difficulty and Question, infallibly and certainly […] we shall see a very great necessity in allowing a liberty in Prophe”