soothsay means soothsaying; prediction; prognostication; prophecy. It carries an Arena rating of 1707, earned across 86 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, soothsay ranks #1,033 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #2,067 of 17,130 for Most Beautiful Words, #2,282 of 17,135 for Most Malleable Words, #2,765 of 17,106 for Most Storied Words.
soothsay is pronounced /ˈsuθˌseɪ/.
Why “soothsay” is a great word
SOOTHSAY — [Noun, Verb] The act or practice of foretelling the future; to utter such a prediction. It is a back-formation from 'soothsayer' or 'soothsaying', from the Old English 'sōþ' ("truth, reality") + 'say' ("to speak"), first recorded in English use in the early 1600s. Unlike "prophesy," which implies divine inspiration, or "augur," which denotes prediction from specific omens, soothsay is the plain, secular craft of speaking a claimed truth about tomorrow. It is the cold palm read in a carnival tent, the dry rustle of scattered tea leaves, and the confident, hollow tone of a financial forecast—the human compulsion to name the unseen, even when the only certainty is the saying itself.
Etymology
Formed as a back-formation from soothsayer or soothsaying, equivalent to sooth + say. Compare Old English sōþseċġan (“to say truly, declare”).
noun
- Soothsaying; prediction; prognostication; prophecy.
- A portent; an omen.
verb
- To foretell the future; make predictions.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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