Previse

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Dr. Goodword
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Previse

Postby Dr. Goodword » Tue Feb 18, 2014 11:52 pm

• previse •

Pronunciation: pri-vaiz, prê-vaizHear it!

Part of Speech: Verb, transitive

Meaning: 1. To foresee, to forecast, to predict, to know in advance. 2. To forewarn, to notify in advance.

Notes: Today's Good Word belongs to the vision family, a family semantically related to seeing. The noun for this verb even contains the word vision; it is, in fact, prevision. This word has an adjective, previsional, and an adverb previsionally. Someone who has the powers to previse is known as a previsor. Careful of the suffix: -or, not -er. It is conjugated like its cousin advise.

In Play: The first meaning of this word is simply "foresee": "Lawmakers cannot previse how people will contrive to circumvent the laws they make." The second meaning of today's word is "forewarn": "Be prevised not to use the saltshaker at any table where Benny is sitting: he always loosens the saltshaker cap when no one is looking."

Word History: Today's word comes from the Latin praevis-, past participial stem of praevidere "to foresee", made up of prae- "before, pre-" + videre "to see". The first person singular of videre is video "I see", which the world has now adopted for a small-screen motion picture. The Proto-Indo-European root weid- "see" spread throughout the Indo-European language family. In English it became wise, since previsors are perceived to be wise people. In German it because wissen "know", because wise people know a lot. The Old English word for "know" was witan; all we have left of this word is wit. (Luciano Eduardo de Oliveira, one of the staunch editors of the Good Word series, prevised a need for a Good Word today, and recommended this one.)
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Slava
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Re: Previse

Postby Slava » Tue Feb 03, 2015 12:48 pm

I should imagine there must be postvise, too. As in postvision is always 20-20.

Too bad our weather prognosticators aren't terribly well gifted in prevision.
Life is like playing chess with chessmen who each have thoughts and feelings and motives of their own.


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