English edit

Etymology edit

From Latin vates (seer, poet) +‎ -ic.

Pronunciation edit

Adjective edit

vatic (comparative more vatic, superlative most vatic)

  1. Pertaining to a prophet; prophetic, oracular.
    • 1993, Anthony Burgess, A Dead Man in Deptford:
      The truth of life lay in the vatic messages words sent, meanings beyond what the world called meaning.
    • 2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Vintage, published 2007, page 129:
      “Inordinate attention from the middle latitudes,” proclaimed Miles, with a sort of vatic swoon in his voice.
    • 2014 September 26, Tom Payne, “Sapiens: a Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, review: 'urgent questions' [print version: The story of our species, 27 September 2014, p. R32]”, in The Daily Telegraph (Review)[1]:
      [T]he book, constructed in short, lucid episodes, can be satisfyingly read as a sequence of provocative talks, at once well informed and vatic.
    • 2022, China Miéville, chapter 6, in A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto, →OCLC:
      Here is that gush, vatic visions of those ‘fixed, fast-frozen relations’ melting []