prescience

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 2, 2026 is: prescience \PRESH-ee-unss\ noun Prescience is a formal word used to refer to the ability to see or anticipate what will or might happen in the future. // He predicted the public's response to the proposed legislation with remarkable prescience. [See the entry >](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prescience) Examples: "... novelists have always faced technological and social upheaval. They have mostly addressed it in one of two ways. The first is to imagine an altered future with the prescience of science fiction; [Mary Shelley's](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Wollstonecraft-Shelley) warning that humans are not always in control of their creations is, if anything, even more resonant today than when Frankenstein was first published in 1818." — Jessi Jezewska Stevens, The Dial, 2 Dec. 2025 Did you know? If you know the origin of [science](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science) you already know half the story of prescience. Science comes from the Latin verb sciō, scīre, "to know," also source of such words as [conscience](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conscience), [conscious](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conscious), and [omniscience](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/omniscience). Prescience has as its ancestor a word that attached prae-, a predecessor of [pre-](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pre-), to this root to make praescire, meaning "to know beforehand."