Another Skald’s-stupid-novel thread, if you want to avoid it for that reason.
I’m not trying to remember a word I already know; I’m searching for a word I hope exists. It’s for a line of dialogue, which currently goes something like this:
Character A: “You should get a doctor to look at your ankle very soon.”
Character B: “Have you had a _________, my friend? Because I’m not in any pain.”
Character C: “What does _________ mean?”
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I currently have the word “presentiment” in the blank, but I don’t like it." Here are the criteria for whatever word will replace it:
The word be a good synonym for premonition.
It must be obscure enough so that a precocious, quick-witted little girl who devours books like Lord of the Rings and Gormenghast, and who delights in expanding her vocabulary, can still reasonably not have encountered it in the aforementioned sense.
It must be so constructed so that said little girl will also not be easily able to infer its meaning by dissection. Put another way, I wish to avoid words with Latin roots if possible, because a really smart kid, hearing the word “presentiment,” is going to quickly deduce the meaning from the context and word elements.
It must be English. Old English or Middle English is fine, but nothing German, Finnish, French, et cetera.
Right now I’m torn between the words “prenotion” and “weird.” The former bothers me for the same reason as “presentiment”; the latter because it’s, well, weird. And it means “fate, destiny; ill fortune” more than it means “premonition” anyway.
Anybody got a better idea?
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“Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey … The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.”
It’s a plot point that the kid’s a brain, and that she’s read every fantasy novel she can put her hands on. It’s inconceivable that she wouldn’t know the words omen, augury, presage, and particularly foreshadowing.
It only matters because I need an odd word so Characters B & C can have a two-line conversation on why you should never ask precognitives for advice.
Prudence, as noted in the OED’s 3d definition as having the meaning of foresight, with citations to 1420, 1513, and 1619: a1420 LYDGATE Troyyes Bk. (Augustus A.4) IV. 4529 Prudence…hath prouyded at a regne in hit silfe deuided Shal recurles tourne wilde and wast. a1513 J. IRLAND Meroure of Wyssdome f. 320, in Dict. Older Sc. Tongue (at cited word), Als lang as the Romanis…saw be thar prudens the thingis to cum as in a merour. a1619 M. FOTHERBY Atheomastix (1622) II. xi. §6. 320 Then must it be, either by Chance, or by Prudence.
Providence also carried a similar meaning around the fifteenth century.
Others:
Presagement
Presagition
Previdence
Prevoyance
Pronoia
Vesyness
And it means “fate, destiny; ill fortune” more than it means “premonition” anyway.