Forecasting

How to spell forecasting

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce forecasting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does forecasting mean?

1. verbEstimating or predicting a future event or condition from current data and trends.
2. nounThe practice or process of predicting future trends, figures, or conditions.

Forecasting in a sentence

• verb

  The analyst spent the morning forecasting next quarter's sales figures.

• noun

  Accurate financial forecasting is essential for setting a realistic budget.

• verb

  Meteorologists rely on satellite data when forecasting the weekend storms.

• noun

  Weather forecasting has improved greatly with modern computing power.

Where does forecasting come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built from the verb 'forecast', which joins the Old English prefix 'fore', meaning 'before' or 'in advance', to 'cast', a verb English borrowed from Old Norse 'kasta', meaning 'to throw'. In the late 1300s 'to cast' had developed a figurative sense of throwing one's mind forward, that is, reckoning or calculating ahead, so 'forecast' literally meant to plan or reckon beforehand. From there it settled into the modern sense of predicting future conditions, especially the weather, by working out the likely outcome from present signs. The '-ing' form names the ongoing activity of making such predictions. Because both halves are plain native and Norse stock joined without any softening, the spelling is straightforward: 'fore' keeps its silent-looking but fully spelled 'e', and 'cast' keeps its single 't' even before the suffix.

How the word is built

• fore- (before, ahead)
• cast (throw, reckon)
• -ing (verb/noun suffix)