- foresee
- foresee, foreknow, divine, apprehend, anticipate can mean to know or expect that something will happen or come into existence in advance of its occurrence or advent or to have knowledge that something exists before it is manifested or expressed.Foresee apart from its context gives no hint of how this knowledge is derived, whether through presentiment, inspiration, imagination, or one's ability to draw inferences{
it's certainly unwise to admit any sort of responsibility for our actions, whose consequences we are never able to foresee— Conrad
}{nobody can foresee how the necessary restriction of the population will be effected— Shaw
}{the kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man— J. R. Lowell
}Foreknow usually implies supernatural powers or the assistance of supernatural powers (as through revelation){if thou art privy to thy country's fate, which, happily, foreknowing may avoid, O, speak— Shak.
}{they themselves decreed their own revolt, not I [God]. If I foreknew, foreknowledge had no influence on their fault— Milton
}{he cannot, however, foreknow how his opponent . . . will behave in action— Toynbee
}Divine is not always clearly distinguishable from foresee, but it often suggests a gift or a special power or sometimes unusual sagacity or discernment{to Rima has been given this quickness of mind and power to divine distant things— Hudson
}{in all the years of his traveling to and fro through Europe he divined hardly one of the social tendencies that had so spectacular a denouement within four years of his death— Brooks
}Apprehend conveys less of a sense of the certainty of what is foreseen than any of the preceding words, but it carries a far stronger implication of the emotional effects of advance knowledge. In general, where one apprehends an evil, one is filled with fear, anxiety, or dread{they agree with me in apprehending that this false step in one daughter will be injurious to the fortunes of all the others— Austen
}{almost every evening he saw Lucy. The inexperienced little wife apprehended no harm in his visits— Meredith
}{his lips quivered, and she apprehended rather than heard what he said— Glasgow
}Anticipate is a more complex term than any of its synonyms. Thus a critic may foresee the verdict of posterity on a literary work, but he anticipates it only when he formulates a judgment which is either accepted by posterity or is pronounced by it as though the verdict were new. One may foreknow one's destiny or apprehend a danger, but one anticipates one's destiny or a danger only when, through the appropriate advance enjoyment or suffering, one also has a foretaste of that destiny or that danger. One may divine a friend's wish in advance of its expression, but one anticipates it only when one also gratifies it in advance of its expression{colleges and universities are expected to pay close attention to, and even anticipate, the many voices heard from outside the campus— Hacker
}Anticipate is also used as an alternative to expect and, more distinctively, in the sense of to look forward to (something expected) with a foretaste of the pleasure or pain it promises{I must know what is in the minds of these people. I must anticipate revolt— Steinbeck
}{pleasure not known beforehand is half wasted; to anticipate it is to double it— Hardy
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
