prodigy

An extraordinary occurrence or creature; an anomaly, especially a monster; a freak.

Noun

An extraordinary occurrence or creature; an anomaly, especially a monster; a freak.
An amazing or marvellous thing; a wonder.
- He is never chased; he would run away with rope-walks of line. Prodigies are told of him. - 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter XXXII, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper &...
A wonderful example of something.
- Traffic at Dover Marine has developed far beyond anything envisaged when the station was built. The layout has become rather cramped, and prodigies of organisation are performed annually by all concerned to save...
An extremely talented person, especially a child.
An extraordinary thing seen as an omen; a portent.
- These on the farther bank now stood and gazed, / By Heaven alarm’d, by prodigies amazed: / A signal omen stopp’d the passing host, / Their martial fury in their wonder lost. - 1717, Homer, translated by Alexander Pope,...
- Prodigies and Portents have infected the beſt VVritings of Antiquity; and have ſo blotted and deformed our modern Annals, that (vvith greater Juſtice than Polybius has obſerv'd it, of the former) they may be rather...
- John Foxe believed that special prodigies had heralded the Reformation. - 1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society, published 2012, page 87:

From Middle English prodige (“portent”), from Latin prōdigium (“omen, portent, prophetic sign”).