the.com/presentiment
The dread that arrives before the bad news does, uninvited but rarely wrong.
means A vague, uneasy feeling that something bad is about to happen, felt before any actual evidence arrives.
from Built from Latin prae- ('before') plus sentire ('to feel' or 'to sense') — the same root that gives us 'sentiment' and 'sense.' It entered English via French pressentiment in the 17th century, literally meaning a 'feeling beforehand.' So while 'sentiment' is feeling in the present, 'presentiment' is feeling that jumps ahead of time, sensing the shape of an event before it's actually arrived.
- etymology
- from praesentire, to sense beforehand
- not premonition
- vaguer, feeling not vision
- favorite habitat
- gothic novels and nervous stomachs
- literary flex
- Brontes used it constantly and ominously