Presagement

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The act of foreshadowing an event through omens or signs as a warning or prediction
2. The act of indicating a future event by warning signs or omens
3. A sense that something will happen based on symbolic signals

Etymology: "Presagement" is a plain formation: the verb "presage" with the suffix "-ment" added to the end. The suffix traces back a long way, through Latin "-mentum", which turned verbs into nouns naming the action or its result, and through Old French "-ment", which carried it into the languages that fed English. English then attached it to "presage" to name the sign or warning that a thing is about to happen. "Presage" itself came into English earlier, through Old French from Latin "praesagire", meaning "to have a foreboding of", built from "prae" ("before") and "sagire" ("to perceive keenly"). So the word's core idea is perceiving something before it arrives, and "presagement" simply turns that act of foreseeing into a thing you can point to.

Synonyms: omen, portent, foreboding