Prophetically

Part of speech: adverb

Definitions

1. In a way that relates to foretelling future events or conveying divine messages
2. Expressed with the quality of predicting outcomes or offering visionary insights
3. Done with the characteristic of revealing or announcing what is believed to happen ahead

Etymology: "Prophetically" is an inflected-style adverb built from "prophetic" plus the suffix "-ally", so its story is mostly the story of its two parts. The adjective "prophetic" came into English through Latin from Greek "prophētikos", meaning "of a prophet", and the Greek root "prophētēs" was itself built from "pro-", "before", and a verb meaning "to speak", so it literally means one who speaks beforehand. The ending is the interesting part. The "-al" in "prophetic-al" comes from Latin "-ālis", which passed through Old French into Middle English, while "-ly" descends from Old English "-līc", a word meaning "body" or "form" that became the common way to turn adjectives into adverbs. English fused the two into "-ally", so the adverb carries a Latin adjective suffix and a Germanic adverb suffix stacked together.

Synonyms: predictively, foretellingly