Prophetic

How to spell prophetic

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce prophetic

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does prophetic mean?

1. adjectiveAccurately predicting or foreshadowing what will happen in the future.

Prophetic in a sentence

• Her warning about the housing market proved oddly prophetic within a year.

• The novel contained a prophetic description of a technology that arrived decades later.

Where does prophetic come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This adjective traces back to the Greek prophetikos, meaning 'of or relating to a prophet', built on prophetes, the title for one who speaks for a god or foretells what is to come. That noun combines pro, meaning 'before' or 'forth', with a form of the verb phanai, 'to speak', so a prophetes was literally 'one who speaks forth' or 'speaks beforehand'. The word passed into Latin as propheticus and then into English through Old French during the late medieval period, settling into use by the 1400s. The same Greek root sits inside 'prophet' and 'prophecy', and recognising the 'pro' plus 'phet' structure helps explain the 'ph' spelling, which preserves the Greek phi rather than a simple 'f'.

How the word is built

• pro- (before, forth)
• phet (from Greek phetes: speaker)
• -ic (adjective suffix)