VATIC adjective (vat-ik)

adjective

1. of, relating to, or characteristic of a prophet.


Quotes

... I can't escape the feeling that Yeats knew, in the vatic, unwitting way of poets.
--*Marcel Theroux,*Strange Bodies, 2013


An ominous vatic feeling had persisted throughout the rest of the evening, which was doubly unsettling to Laurel Manderley ...
--*David Foster Wallace,*"Mister Squishy," Oblivion, 2004



Origin

The Latin noun vātis or vātēs “soothsayer, prophet, poet, bard” is probably a borrowing from a Celtic language (it has an exact correspondence in form and meaning with Old Irish fáith “seer, prophet,” from Proto-Celtic wātis). The Latin noun and Celtic root wāt- are from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to be spiritually aroused.” One of the Germanic forms of this root appears in the Old English adjective wōd “raging, crazy,” which survives in modern English in the adjective wood. Vatic entered English in the early 17th century.