First recorded in 1885–90
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
One was with a mind reader — though he’d reject the term — who insisted that the trick wasn’t magic at all, but attention.
From Salon ● Feb. 18, 2026
“It isn’t like trying to draw some type of conclusion and be a mind reader on who’s about to commit an offense,” Dart said.
From Seattle Times ● May 16, 2024
Last year Geller's friend Scottish mentalist and mind reader Drew McAdam, who comes from East Lothian, the county that includes Lamb, made the first recording of a piece of music called Our Land.
From BBC ● Aug. 6, 2022
Nightmare Alley stars Bradley Cooper as Stanton Carlisle, a nightclub mind reader who becomes tangled up with Cate Blanchett as Dr. Lilith Ritter, a psychiatrist out to debunk him as a fraud.
From The Verge ● Sep. 16, 2021
The woman seemed to think Ophie was a mind reader.
From "Ophie's Ghosts" by Justina Ireland
CNN’s Jake Tapper, in debriefing reporter Evan Perez, said he couldn’t ask him to be a mind-reader in assessing Trump’s mood.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 13, 2023
I wasn’t trying to see if it could guess what actually came next — it’s not a mind-reader.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 26, 2021
I know that no one is a mind-reader, but I didn’t think I was coercing my partner, and I feel very uneasy trying to retroactively “read” their body language for clues.
From Slate ● Mar. 18, 2021
“Some are legitimate and some are corrupt, and you don’t need to be a mind-reader to figure out which is which,” he said.
From Washington Times ● Jan. 29, 2020
His perceptions are sharp and delicate and he is a mind-reader.
From "Travels with Charley in Search of America" by John Steinbeck
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
