Profecie

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An utterance foretelling what will happen later, especially one believed to come from divine inspiration
2. A forecast of coming events delivered by a seer or holy person who claims to receive revelation from a god
3. The foretelling of future events, an archaic spelling of a word for a divinely inspired prediction

Etymology: The spelling you have here is Middle English, from the Old French "profecie," which came from the Latin "prophetia." Greek "prophēteia" lies behind that, built from "prophētēs," a "spokesman" or "one who speaks for a god." The Greek prefix "pro-" meant "forth" or "on behalf of," and the root "phanai" meant "to speak," so the sense was speaking forth on a god's behalf rather than predicting the future in the modern sense. The "ph" spelling we use today was restored later under the influence of Latin and Greek, which is why the older form looks so different. The medieval spelling shows the word's route through French, where the Greek "ph" had already been softened. Medieval English used the word mainly for divinely inspired announcements, including biblical prophecies, and only gradually came to mean any forecast about the future.