Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Did you know this?

prescience / PRESH-ee-unss / noun
foreknowledge of events: 
a : divine omniscience
b : human anticipation of the course of events : foresight
If you know the origin of "science," you already know half the story of "prescience." "Science" comes from the Latin verb "scire," which means "to know" and which is the source of many English words ("conscience," "conscious," and "omniscience," just to name a few). "Prescience" comes from the Latin verb "praescire," which means "to know beforehand." "Praescire" joins the verb "scire" with the prefix "prae-," a predecessor of "pre-." A lesser-known "scire"-derived word is "nescience." "Nescience" means "ignorance" and comes from "scire" plus "ne-," which means "not" in Latin.

-- Merriam-Webster.com

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