soothsayer

UK/ˈsuːθˌseɪə/US/ˈsuθˌseɪɚ/

nounC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,781 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: soothsayers

A soothsayer is somebody who foretells the future. Consult a soothsayer, the soothsayer warned him, an old soothsayer.

It is archaic and literary, and it is fixed in English by the soothsayer who tells Caesar to beware the ides of March. The word means truth-sayer: sooth is an old word for truth, which survives in forsooth and in soothe, meaning to calm, originally to say what somebody wants to hear.

Definitions of soothsayer

1nounsoothsayerSomebody who foretells the future.C1
“The king consulted a soothsayer before every battle to learn whether he would win.”

soothsayer is a foreteller.

Where it comes from

Middle English sothsaier is sooth, truth, plus sayer. Forsooth and soothe come from the same truth.

Middle English
sothsaier
English, today
soothsayer

From Middle English sothsaier, zothziggere, by surface analysis, sooth + sayer.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Myths & Legends, Fairy Tales & Folklore

Practise this word

soothsayer in the wild

In Greek mythology, Melampus was a legendary soothsayer and healer, originally of Pylos, who ruled at Argos.
Melampus
In this story, Prolix the soothsayer claims that the village of the Gauls will become polluted by a divine curse.
Asterix and the Soothsayer
Duncan Campbell was a Scottish deaf and mute man and professed soothsayer.
Duncan Campbell (soothsayer)
Traditional belief means in sickness it is usual to go to the soothsayer to find out whether one has offended an ancestor.
Nawuri language

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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