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foreknowledge

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Etymology and origin of the English word foreknowledge

Confidence
Established
Formation
Derivation
First attested
1535 Coverdale's Bible More words from the 16th century
Ultimate origins
English fore-Middle English knowlege
Etymology tree
inherited borrowed derived
English knowledge
English foreknowledge
From the same root
English knowledgeable ← knowledge

Pronunciation

  • UK: /fɔːˈnɒlɪdʒ/[1]
  • US: /fɔːrˈnɑːlɪdʒ/[1]

Etymology

It is formed from English fore- + knowledge.[2][3][4][5][6][7] Barnhart sees the pattern in the earlier noun Middle English foreknowynge, recorded about 1380 in Chaucer's translation of Boethius.[3][8] Old English had the verb forewitan (“to foreknow”), Middle English forwiten,[4][9] and foreknow itself is Middle English according to Merriam-Webster Unabridged, which dates it to the 14th century.[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Knowledge of an event before it happens: 1535, in Coverdale's Bible, at Judith 9:6.[2][3] Etymonline likewise has the 1530s,[4] and Dictionary.com 1525–35.[7]

Semantic evolution

The OED records one sense from 1535 to the present, and Etymonline glosses it as prescience.[2][4] Johnson (1755) defines it as knowledge of what has not yet happened, quoting Hooker's "eternal foreknowledge".[10] Later quotations are secular, for a lender's "foreknowledge that the borrower will be unable to pay" in Grote, and for a passing sense of what is coming in Saki.[6] Merriam-Webster Unabridged gives precognition as a synonym.[5]

Timeline

  • 1535 – knowledge of an event before it happens.[2][3]

Meanings

Noun

  1. Knowledge of something before it happens or exists; prescience: They denied any foreknowledge of the raid.[5][2][6]

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  4. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  5. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  6. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  7. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  8. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
  9. ^ Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
  10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
Cite this entry

“Foreknowledge.” Etymologically, 6 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/en/foreknowledge. Accessed 7 Nov. 2026.

Last edited on . ·