presentiment
A premonition; a feeling that something, often of undesirable nature, is going to happen.
Noun
- A premonition; a feeling that something, often of undesirable nature, is going to happen.
- A man, my good Sir, has seldom an offer of kindness to make to a woman, but she has a presentiment of it some moments before. - 1768, Mr. Yorick [pseudonym; Laurence Sterne], A Sentimental Journey through France and...
- A thousand alarming presentiments of evil to her beloved Catherine from this terrific separation must oppress her heart with sadness, and drown her in tears for the last day or two of their being together; […] - 1803...
- Oh, those women! They nurse and cuddle their presentiments, and make darlings of their ugliest thoughts, as they do of their deformed children. - 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 13, in...
Origin
From French pressentiment, from Middle French, equivalent to pre- + sentiment.