Sibylist

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who foretells the future in the manner of the ancient sibyls, the legendary women who delivered prophecies
2. One who makes prophecies or speaks oracular predictions, modeled on the ancient Greek and Roman prophetesses known as sibyls
3. Someone who acts as a prophet and utters divinely inspired forecasts, like the oracular women of classical antiquity

Etymology: The word starts with the sibyls of classical antiquity, women thought to deliver prophecies while inspired by a god. Their name came into Greek and Latin as "sibylla," and English took "sibyl" from Latin and French for the same figure, the prophetess who speaks oracles. Ancient tradition held that the most famous of them, the Cumaean Sibyl, wrote her prophecies on leaves, a detail that shows how closely the figure was tied to the act of writing down divine speech. "Sibylist" is a much later and rarer formation: "sibyl" with the suffix "-ist," which denotes a person who practises or follows something. It names someone who acts as a sibyl, a prophetic or oracular woman, rather than a historical sibyl herself. The word is uncommon enough that you will mostly meet it in older or deliberately archaic writing.

Synonyms: seer, prophet, soothsayer