Other forms: envisaged, envisages, envisaging
To envisage is to picture in your mind how something could be. Envisage a future, hard to envisage, envisage the outcome.
It is chiefly British; American English says envision. It is used most in planning and policy: we envisage about four hundred homes. Cannot envisage is a formal way of saying something seems impossible. Note imagine, which is the everyday word; and that envisage takes a noun or an -ing form but not a to-infinitive, which is a small trap: envisage building it, not envisage to build it.
1verbenvisageTo picture in your mind how something could be.
“I can't envisage living anywhere but by the sea.”
synonyms: envision, imagine
envisage is a picturing ahead.
Also accepted in games: envision, imagine
French envisager comes from visage, a face — to look in the face of something. Envisaging a future is facing it, which is a more direct image than imagining gives.
Proto-Indo-European
*weyd-
French
envisager
English, today
envisage
Built from
From French envisager, from en (“in”) + visage (“visage”); equivalent to en- + visage.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA