Prophet

How to spell prophet

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce prophet

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does prophet mean?

1. nounA person regarded as an inspired teacher or proclaimer of the will of God.
2. nounA person who claims to foresee or predict future events.

Prophet in a sentence

• The ancient prophet was said to have delivered messages from God.

• Critics mocked him as a self-appointed prophet of economic doom.

• The temple was named after a revered prophet of the old faith.

• She proved to be an accurate prophet of the coming political upheaval.

Where does prophet come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek prophetes, which described a person who speaks on behalf of a god, an interpreter or spokesman who delivered divine messages. It was built from pro, meaning 'forth' or 'on behalf of', combined with phenai, meaning 'to speak', so the literal sense was 'one who speaks forth'. The Greek term was adopted into Church Latin as propheta to render the figures of the Hebrew scriptures, and from there it travelled into Old French as prophete before reaching English in the 1100s and 1200s. The 'ph' spelling is the giveaway of its Greek pedigree, since Greek used the letter phi for the f-sound, and that same phi-derived 'ph' explains its presence in relatives like prophecy and prophesy. It is worth remembering that prophet has nothing at all to do with money: its sound-alike profit comes from a completely separate Latin source (profectus, meaning 'progress' or 'advance'), which is why one ends in -phet and the other in -fit.

How the word is built

• pro- (forth, on behalf of)
• -phet (from Greek phenai, to speak); literally one who speaks forth for a god

Words that sound like prophet

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• profit: The money gained in a transaction or business after costs are subtracted.