Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Preconception; anticipation; a generalization from slight experience.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A notice or notion which precedes something else in time; previous notion or thought; foreknowledge.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun foreknowledge.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Now in the three foregoing instances the prenotion is clear and certain.

    The New Organon 2005

  • Whereas, if we have any sure prenotion, infinity is at once cut off, and the memory has not so far to range.

    The New Organon 2005

  • For when we try to recollect or call a thing to mind, if we have no prenotion or perception of what we are seeking, we seek and toil and wander here and there, as if in infinite space.

    The New Organon 2005

  • Primitive is grounded upon the supposition that the mind, when it is withdrawn and collected into itself, and not diffused into the organs of the body, hath some extent and latitude of prenotion; which therefore appeareth most in sleep, in ecstasies, and near death, and more rarely in waking apprehensions; and is induced and furthered by those abstinences and observances which make the mind most to consist in itself.

    The Advancement of Learning 2003

  • The former of these hath begotten two arts, both of prediction or prenotion; whereof the one is honoured with the inquiry of Aristotle, and the other of Hippocrates.

    The Advancement of Learning 2003

  • It is known, too, that people often say strange things from confused or indistinct recollections of what has befallen them in a prior state of existence, or from prenotion or intuition of things as yet unknown to others; and although in the sciences we accept nothing as conclusive that is not confirmed by experiment, the vastness or strangeness of the thought, far from attracting ridicule, generally leads to inquiry, experiments, and results.

    Another World Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah Benjamin Lumley 1843

  • The former of these hath begotten two arts, both of prediction or prenotion; whereof the one is honoured with the inquiry of Aristotle, and the other of Hippocrates.

    The Advancement of Learning Francis Bacon 1593

  • Primitive is grounded upon the supposition that the mind, when it is withdrawn and collected into itself, and not diffused into the organs of the body, hath some extent and latitude of prenotion; which therefore appeareth most in sleep, in ecstasies, and near death, and more rarely in waking apprehensions; and is induced and furthered by those abstinences and observances which make the mind most to consist in itself.

    The Advancement of Learning Francis Bacon 1593

  • The wonderful art and contrivance wherewith it is adjusted to those ends and purposes for which it was apparently designed, the vast extent, number, and variety of objects that are at once with so much ease and quickness and pleasure suggested by it: all these afford subject for much and pleasing speculation, and may, if anything, give us some glimmering analogous prenotion of things which are placed beyond the certain discovery and comprehension of our present state.

    A Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision George Berkeley 1719

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