Presentient

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Describing a stage that comes before any awareness, feeling or consciousness has emerged in a living being or system
2. Referring to something that precedes the arising of sentience, when no subjective experience yet exists
3. Pertaining to the period or condition before an organism or entity acquires the capacity to perceive and feel

Etymology: "Presentient" is built from the prefix "pre-", meaning "before" or "in advance," attached to "sentient," which comes from the Latin "sentiens," the present participle of "sentire," "to feel" or "to perceive." So the word literally means something like "feeling or perceiving beforehand." The sense in English is a little different from that of its parts. A presentient feeling is one that arrives before conscious awareness has caught up with it, a sense that something is about to happen before you can say why. The "pre-" does the work of placing the feeling ahead of thought, while "sentient" supplies the idea of perception itself. The word follows a familiar pattern in English, where "pre-" is joined to an existing adjective to mark a stage that comes earlier. Its history is plain and transparent, so the parts explain nearly everything about it.

Synonyms: prescient, foreseeing