predestinate
Americanverb (used with object)
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Theology. to foreordain by divine decree or purpose.
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Obsolete. to foreordain; predetermine.
adjective
verb
adjective
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predestined or foreordained
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theol subject to predestination; decided by God from all eternity
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of predestinate
1350–1400; Middle English predestinaten (v.) < Latin praedestinātus, past participle of praedestināre to appoint beforehand. See pre-, destine, -ate 1
Explanation
Something that's predestinate has been planned or arranged already — there's no way to change its outcome. Some religious observers believe that life is predestinate, willed by God. If you believe that people have free will, the ability to make decisions that change the course of their lives, then you don't agree that everything is predestinate. If, however, you think God or fate or nature has already determined what will happen to you, you believe in a predestinate life. This adjective comes from the Old French prédestiner, "ordain of God," from the Latin root praedestinare, "determine beforehand."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
I have recently learned that I am But a creature that moves In predestinate grooves.
From Time Magazine Archive
I had found my predestinate, Become a faithful wife and e'en A fond and careful mother been.
From Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] A Romance of Russian Life in Verse by Spalding, Henry
A rarer, more intense, more strictly predestinate genius has never been known to poetry.
From The Hound of Heaven by Thompson, Francis
But the human will does not exist in the abstract world of reasoned science, in the world of atoms and vibrations, that rigidly predestinate scheme of things in space and time.
From Anticipations Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human life and Thought by Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
"It's said there's ane predestinate To be his mortal foe, But that man is yet unborn, And lang may it be so."
From The Scottish Fairy Book by Grierson, Elizabeth Wilson
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.
