premonition
Americannoun
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premonitions
plural
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a feeling of anticipation of or anxiety over a future event; presentiment.
He had a vague premonition of danger.
- Synonyms:
- sign, omen, portent, foreboding
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a forewarning.
noun
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an intuition of a future, usually unwelcome, occurrence; foreboding
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an early warning of a future event; forewarning
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of premonition
First recorded in 1425–75; late Middle English premunicioun, from Late Latin praemonitiōn-, stem of praemonitiō “a forewarning”; equivalent to pre- + monition; also cf. praemunire
Explanation
A premonition is a strong feeling or sense of foreboding that something is about to happen — such as an eerie feeling on a seemingly calm day that a storm is coming. The noun premonition literally means "an advance warning," derived from the Latin prefix prae-, meaning "before" or "in advance," and the Latin verb monere, "to warn or advise." However, a premonition is not a literal advance warning, like a letter in the mail that says, "Don't come visit next week because the electricity will be out," or a sign on a path that says, "Warning! Danger! Keep out!" It's more of a feeling, a hunch, or perhaps a dream, that signals a future event.
Vocabulary lists containing premonition
The Outsiders
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Power Prefix: pre-
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Metamorphosis
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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.
See Examples For:
When access to these documents was finally promised, three months later, Mathipa had a premonition that he would be murdered - according to Brig Paulina Sekgobela, his commanding officer.
From BBC ● Aug. 9, 2026
Oddly, that cigar turned out to be an unwitting premonition.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 28, 2025
Our former faith in manifest destiny always included another possibility; let’s call it a premonition of manifest doom.
From Salon ● Jan. 21, 2025
Dr. Bitton saw that, in a sense, everything that had passed between himself and Mr. Sinwar was a premonition of the events now coming to pass.
From New York Times ● May 26, 2024
Her premonition was complete fiction, and he would not dwell on it another moment.
From "The Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest" by Aubrey Hartman
He said he had no premonitions that things were about to go haywire.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 27, 2026
There are almost no conversations, only premonitions and plans delivered in bullet-points like a group research project.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 15, 2025
His mostly unpublished premonitions were eerily prescient: Among others, he famously intuited the existence of the neutron from prior experiments.
From Science Magazine ● Dec. 20, 2023
But his pleas fell on deaf ears, and his premonitions would come true.
From BBC ● Sep. 19, 2023
Alone, abandoned by his premonitions, fleeing the chill that was to accompany him until death, he sought a last refuge in Macondo in the warmth of his oldest memories.
From "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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.
