prophesy

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English prophecien, also prophesien,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Old French prophecier, also prophesier and profeciier,^[5][2][3] formed from the noun prophecie (“prophecy”).^[5][6][7] The OED, in its revision of 2007, takes the English verb as partly this French borrowing and partly a use of the noun prophecy as a verb,^[8] and Dictionary.com also treats it as a verbal use of a variant of the noun.^[9] The noun goes back through Late Latin prophētīa to Ancient Greek προφητεία (prophēteía, “gift of interpreting the will of the gods”),^[5][10][3] from προφήτης (prophḗtēs, “interpreter, spokesman”),^[10][7] literally "one who speaks out".^[11][7] Partridge instead called the French verb a shortening of prophetiser.^[11] Compare Middle Low German profētien and German prophezeien.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

To speak by divine inspiration, or as a prophet: about 1350, in a Middle English version of the Apocalypse,^[8][3] mid-14th century in Etymonline.^[5] The form prophesien is recorded from about 1384.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The religious sense came first, and the sense of predicting events without any divine claim grew out of it: the intransitive "foretell" is recorded from before 1387, in Trevisa, and the transitive use with an object from 1372.^[8] In Old French the same two uses, speaking as a prophet and predicting the future, had already developed by the first half of the 13th century.^[8] From 1583 the verb also meant to expound the Bible as an expression of divine inspiration;^[8] from 1608, in Shakespeare's King Lear, it also meant to be an early sign of something, to foreshadow.^[8] Johnson (1755) gave "to predict; to foretell; to prognosticate" and "to foreshow" for the transitive verb and quoted the same Shakespearean line for the second.^[12] The spelling took a long time to settle: before about 1700 prophecy and prophesy were both frequent for both noun and verb, and the modern split of -cy for the noun and -sy for the verb was not established until the 18th century.^[8][5][3] Middle English also had prophetisen from the mid-14th century, from Old French profetisier and Latin prophētīzō, and prophet as a verb from the mid-15th century.^[5][2]

Timeline

• c. 1350 – intransitive, to speak by divine inspiration.^[8][3]
• 1372 – transitive, to foretell or to utter by inspiration.^[8]
• before 1387 – intransitive, to predict future events.^[8]
• c. 1400 – with a clause as object, in Piers Plowman.^[8]
• 1583 – to interpret or expound the Bible.^[8]
• 1608 – to foreshadow, in Shakespeare's King Lear.^[8]
• 18th century – prophesy fixed as the spelling of the verb.^[8][5]

Meanings

Verb

1. To foretell something, especially a future event; to predict: The almanac prophesied a hard winter.^[13][4][8]
2. To utter or reveal something by, or as if by, divine inspiration.^[13][4][8]
3. To speak for a god; to act as a prophet.^[4][8][14]
4. To be an early sign of something; to foreshadow.^[4][8]
5. (archaic) To expound scripture or give instruction in religious subjects.^[13][8]

Word family

• prophesier
• prophesiable
• unprophesied

Related words

• prophecy
• prophet
• prophetic
• fame
• prophetize

Usage notes

The noun is now spelled prophecy and the verb prophesy,^[8][3] although the Merriam-Webster Unabridged still records each spelling as a less common variant of the other.^[4] The last syllable of the verb has a full long vowel, as in verbs in -fy and in multiply.^[8]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
11. ^ a b Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
14. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press