Retrodicting

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The practice of deducing historical facts by leveraging contemporary understanding
2. The method of reconstructing past events through the lens of current information
3. Drawing conclusions about what happened before based on what is known now

Etymology: "Retrodicting" is the present participle of "retrodict," a word built in English from two parts: the prefix "retro-," meaning backward, and "predict," meaning to foretell. Where "predict" looks forward to what will happen, "retrodict" runs the same logic in reverse, reasoning from present evidence back to what must have occurred earlier. The prefix "retro-" has a longer ancestry than the word it sits in. It comes ultimately from Latin "retrō," meaning backward or behind, and was taken into English as a combining form, so it can be attached to many existing words. "Predict" came into English from Latin "praedicere," meaning to say beforehand. Joining the two gives a word that is transparent in form: to retrodict is to say beforehand in reverse, that is, to say afterward what came before.

Synonyms: reconstructing, inferring, deducing, analyzing, interpreting