Fore´sight

(2 syl. ), a mad superstitious old man, who “consulted the stars, and believed in omens, portents, and predictions.” He referred “man’s goatish disposition to the charge of a star,” and says he himself was “born when the Crab was ascending, so that all his affairs in life have gone backwards.” I know the signs, and the planets, and their houses; can judge of motions, direct and retrograde, of sextiles, quadrates, trines, and oppositions, fiery trigons and aquatic trigons. Know whether life shall be long or short, happy or unhappy; whether diseases are curable or incurable; if journeys shall be prosperous, undertakings succe ful, or stolen goods recovered.—H. Congreve, Love for Love , ii. (1695).