Anticipatory

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /anˌtɪsɪˈpeɪtəɹi/

Definitions

1. Relating to the act of expecting or looking forward to something that is going to happen
2. Connected to the feelings or actions taken in preparation for future events or circumstances that one expects to occur
3. Pertaining to the feeling or process of waiting in advance for a future event

Etymology: Anticipatory is built from "anticipate" and the suffix "-ory," and the suffix is the more interesting part. It descends from Latin "-torius," a formative used to turn verbs into adjectives describing what does or relates to the action. Latin "anticipare" meant "to take beforehand," from "ante" ("before") and "capere" ("to take"), so the core idea is grabbing something ahead of time. The suffix took a long route into English. Its ancestors ran through Proto-Italic and Old Latin, where "-ios" and "-ius" were ordinary adjective endings, and it reached English through Old French as "-orie" in Middle English before settling into the modern "-ory" form. Words like "advisory" and "introductory" follow the same pattern, so "anticipatory" sits in a large family of adjectives that all describe a stage of acting or preparing.

Synonyms: expectant, foreseeing, predictive, preemptive, proactive

Antonyms: reactive, unpredictive, indifferent, unconcerned, unprepared