vaticinate, v.
(vəˈtɪsɪneɪt)
[f. L. vāticināt-, ppl. stem of vāticinārī to forebode, foretell, prophesy, f. vātēs vates.]
1. intr. To speak as a prophet or seer; to utter vaticinations or predictions; to foretell events.
| 1623 Cockeram i, Vaticinate, to prophesie. 1634 Sir T. Herbert Trav. 220 And then goes on vaticinating,..Whiles Cambray's issue serue the Lord their Maker [etc.]. 1652 Gaule Magastrom. 187 Is it not by diabolical instinct that they here peremptorily vaticinate or ominate of long life, short life, marriage [etc.]? 1678 Cudworth Intell. Syst. i. iii. §29. 134 Aristotle (as it were Vaticinating concerning it) somewhere calls [the Spirit of God]..a certain Better and Diviner thing than Reason. 1744 Berkeley Siris §253 All have not alike learned the connexion of natural things, or understand what they signify, or know how to vaticinate by them. 1829 Gen. P. Thompson Exerc. (1842) I. 82 What if Humphrey has vaticinated? What if he has beaten all prognosticators since Nostradamus? 1835 Chambers's Jrnl. Aug. 209 The plan followed by the late Mr. Coleridge in vaticinating upon the events of the last war. 1886 Dowden Shelley I. vi. 239 From a hundred platforms..gentlemen declaimed, vaticinated, and returned thanks to one another. |
| transf. 1642 H. More Song of Soul ii. ii. iii. 9 Intellection Or higher gets, or at least hath some sent Of God, vaticinates, or is parturient. |
2. trans. To foretell, predict, prognosticate, or prophesy (a future event).
| 1652 Gaule Magastrom. 259 Chalcas did vaticinate or prognosticate the destruction of Troy. 1658 Cokaine Obstinate Lady ii. i, He was an intricate Prognosticator of firmamental Eclipses, and vaticinated future Occurents by the mysterious influences of the sublime Stars. 1820 Byron Lett. to Murray 24 April, I vaticinate a row in Italy. 1831 T. L. Peacock Crotchet Castle (1887) 178, I vaticinate what will be the upshot of all his schemes of reform. 1886 Symonds Renaiss. It., Cath. React. VII. xiv. 412 To vaticinate a reign of socialistic terror for the immediate future. |
| transf. 1678 Cudworth Intell. Syst. 378 My soul seemeth to vaticinate and presage its approaching dismission and freedom from this its prison. 1877 A. B. Alcott Table-t. 133 Instinct, intuition, volition, embosom and express whatsoever the Spirit vaticinates. |
Hence
vaˈticinating vbl. n. and ppl. a.| 1634 Sir T. Herbert Trav. 207 These vaticinating boyes who with their long-spread hair fall flat afore the Idoll. Ibid. (1638) 356 Virgil..from some vaticinating Notion seemes to point at it, in the 6 lib. ænead. a 1693 Urquhart's Rabelais iii. xxv. 210 The Cock Vaticinating and Alectryomantick, ate up the Pickles. 1791–1823 D'Israeli Cur. Lit. (1858) III. 278 George Withers, the vaticinating poet of our civil wars. |