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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

anticipation.

The act of anticipating, taking up, placing, or considering something beforehand, or before the proper time in natural order.

12 characters5 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ænˌtɪs.ɪˈpeɪ.ʃən/UK/ænˌtɪs.əˈpeɪ.ʃən/US[ɛənˌtɪs.əˈpeɪ.ʃən]US/ænˌtɪs.ə.pæɪ.ʃən/Australia
  1. The act of anticipating, taking up, placing, or considering something beforehand, or before the proper time in natural order.

    countable · uncountable
    Often the anticipation of a shot is worse than the pain of the stick.
  2. The eagerness associated with waiting for something to occur.

    countable · uncountable
    He waited with great anticipation for Christmas to arrive.
    He waited in anticipation of the arrival of Christmas.
  3. Prepayment of a debt, generally in order to pay less interest.

    countable · uncountable
  4. Prolepsis.

    countable · rhetoric · uncountable
  5. A non-harmonic tone that is lower or higher than a note in the previous chord and a unison to a note in the next chord.

    countable · uncountable
  6. Hasty notion; intuitive preconception.

    countable · obsolete · uncountable
Where this word comes from

From Middle English anticipacioun, from Middle French anticipation and its etymon Latin anticipātiō, anticipātiōnem. By surface analysis, anticipate + -ion.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.