Anticipate

How to spell anticipate

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce anticipate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does anticipate mean?

1. verbTo expect or predict something, and often to prepare for it in advance.

Anticipate in a sentence

• The team did not anticipate such a sharp rise in demand.

• Good managers anticipate problems before they grow serious.

Where does anticipate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin verb anticipare, which meant 'to take beforehand' or 'to act before someone else does'. It was built from ante, meaning 'before', and capere, meaning 'to take' or 'to seize', so the literal sense was grasping something in advance of its arrival. The same capere root quietly powers a large family of English words, including capture, receive, and participate, all of which involve some form of taking. English adopted anticipate in the sixteenth century, at first in the sense of seizing or using something ahead of the proper time, and only later settling into the modern meaning of expecting or looking forward to a future event. The spelling trap sits in the middle: the prefix is ante (before), not the more familiar anti (against), and the unstressed 'cip' is easy to mishear and misspell.

How the word is built

• anti- (from ante-, before)
• cip (from Latin capere, to take)
• -ate (verb-forming suffix)