Other forms: seers
A seer is someone who can see what is going to happen. The old woman in the story who tells the king he will die at his son's hand, and turns out to be right.
The word lives in myth, prophecy and old religion, beside oracle, prophet and soothsayer, and it is rare in ordinary speech. Say it in two syllables: SEE-er. It reaches into serious modern writing as praise — the few economists who saw the crash coming get called seers afterwards. Keep it well away from the fortune teller at a fair: a seer is grave, and the word hands weight to whoever it names. There is a feminine form, seeress, and it is dated.
1nounseerA person who can see what will happen in the future.
“The king sent for a seer the night before the battle.”
2nounjudgementA person whose judgement about what is coming turns out to be right.
“The few who warned about the crash were later treated as seers.”
seer is a kind of prophet.
Seer is Middle English seere, and it comes apart into see plus -er: one who sees. English gave its most mysterious job the plainest name it had, built the same way as baker, singer and runner.
Middle English
seere
English, today
seer
From Middle English seere, equivalent to see + er.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA