v. [f. L. vāticināt-, ppl. stem of vāticinārī to forebode, foretell, prophesy, f. vātēs VATES.]
1. intr. To speak as a prophet or seer; to utter vaticinations or predictions; to foretell events.
1623. Cockeram, I. Vaticinate, to prophesie.
1634. Sir T. Herbert, Trav., 220. And then goes on vaticinating,… Whiles Cambray’s issue serue the Lord their Maker [etc.].
1652. Gaule, Magastrom., 187. Is it not by diabolical instinct that they here peremptorily vaticinate or ominate of long life, short life, marriage [etc.]?
1678. Cudworth, Intell. Syst., I. iii. § 29. 134. Aristotle (as it were Vaticinating concerning it) somewhere calls [the Spirit of God] … q certain Better and Diviner thing than Reason.
1744. Berkeley, Siris, § 253. All have not alike learned the connexion of natural things, or understand what they signify, or know how to vaticinate by them.
1829. Gen. P. Thompson, Exerc. (1842), I. 82. What if Humphrey has vaticinated? What if he has beaten all prognosticators since Nostradamus?
1835. Chambers’s Jrnl., Aug., 209. The plan followed by the late Mr. Coleridge in vaticinating upon the events of the last war.
1886. Dowden, Shelley, I. vi. 239. From a hundred platforms … gentlemen declaimed, vaticinated, and returned thanks to one another.
transf. 1642. H. More, Song of Soul, II. II. iii. 9. Intellection Or higher gets, or at least hath some sent Of God, vaticinates, or is parturient.
2. trans. To foretell, predict, prognosticate or prophesy (a future event).
1652. Gaule, Magastrom., 259. Chalcas did vaticinate or prognosticate the destruction of Troy.
1658. Cokaine, Obstinate Lady, II. i. He was an intricate Prognosticator of firmamental Eclipses, and vaticinated future Occurents by the mysterious influences of the sublime Stars.
1820. Byron, Lett. to Murray, 24 April. I vaticinate a row in Italy.
1831. T. L. Peacock, Crotchet Castle (1887), 178. I vaticinate what will be the upshot of all his schemes of reform.
1886. Symonds, Renaiss. It., Cath. React., VII. xiv. 412. To vaticinate a reign of socialistic terror for the immediate future.
transf. 1678. Cudworth, Intell. Syst., 378. My soul seemeth to vaticinate and presage its approaching dismission and freedom from this its prison.
1877. A. B. Alcott, Table-t., 133. Instinct, intuition, volition, embosom and express whatsoever the Spirit vaticinates.
Hence Vaticinating vbl. sb. and ppl. a.
1634. Sir T. Herbert, Trav., 207. These vaticinating boyes who with their long-spread hair fall flat afore the Idoll. Ibid. (1638), 356. Virgil … from some vaticinating Notion seemes to point at it, in the 6 lib. Ænead.
a. 1693. Urquhart’s Rabelais, III. xxv. 210. The Cock Vaticinating and Alectryomantick, ate up the Pickles.
1791–1823. D’Israeli, Cur. Lit. (1858), III. 278. George Withers, the vaticinating poet of our civil wars.
