Predicting

How to spell predicting

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce predicting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does predicting mean?

1. verbSaying in advance that a particular event or outcome will happen, often based on evidence or experience.

Predicting in a sentence

• The forecaster spent the morning predicting heavy rain for the coast.

• Analysts are predicting a sharp rise in house prices next year.

Where does predicting come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word grows from the Latin verb praedicere, which meant 'to say beforehand' or 'to foretell'. It was built from the prefix prae-, meaning 'before' or 'in advance', joined to dicere, meaning 'to say' or 'to tell', whose past participle dictus gives us the spelling element 'dict'. The same dicere root sits inside a whole family of English words, including 'dictate', 'verdict', 'contradict' and 'dictionary', all of which keep that tell-tale 'dict' spelling. English took 'predict' into use in the early 1600s, when it described declaring that something would happen in the future, and 'predicting' is simply its present participle. Remembering that the core is 'dict' (to say), with 'pre' (before) in front, helps fix the spelling: it is the act of saying something before it happens.

How the word is built

• pre- (before)
• dict (from Latin dicere: to say, tell)
• -ing (present participle suffix)