as in prophetic
being a sign of a later course of events
unfortunately, the stock market crash of 1929 turned out to be a predictive event, for the next decade was consumed by the Great Depression
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Recent Examples of predictive
His joint-embedding predictive architecture (JEPA) is designed to build machines that develop internal models of the world through observation, the way humans do, rather than through text prediction.
—
Nick Lichtenberg, Fortune, 23 Apr. 2026
Klein is a cosponsor of a bill working its way through the Minnesota Legislature to ban most wagering on predictive markets, including the outcome of elections.
—ABC News, 22 Apr. 2026
Predicting incident trends can be a form of predictive policing, which uses data to anticipate where, when and how crime may occur.
—Anne Toomey McKenna, The Conversation, 21 Apr. 2026
Colossal is licensing its gene-editing technology to other labs and has spun out four businesses, the largest of which, a biologic predictive engine called Astromech, is valued at more than $2 billion.
—Liz Hoffman, semafor.com, 21 Apr. 2026
See All Example Sentences for predictive
Nick Lichtenberg, Fortune, 23 Apr. 2026
Klein is a cosponsor of a bill working its way through the Minnesota Legislature to ban most wagering on predictive markets, including the outcome of elections.
—ABC News, 22 Apr. 2026
Predicting incident trends can be a form of predictive policing, which uses data to anticipate where, when and how crime may occur.
—Anne Toomey McKenna, The Conversation, 21 Apr. 2026
Colossal is licensing its gene-editing technology to other labs and has spun out four businesses, the largest of which, a biologic predictive engine called Astromech, is valued at more than $2 billion.
—Liz Hoffman, semafor.com, 21 Apr. 2026
See All Example Sentences for predictive
Recent Examples of Synonyms for predictive
Adjective
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Rereading it now, I was chilled to find that as much as Orwell provides a prophetic guide to our times, so does Nafisi, who chronicles daily life as the Islamic revolution transforms Iran.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
21 Apr. 2026
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That album title became prophetic as BINI continued to gain more wins year after year.—
Althea Legaspi,
Rolling Stone,
10 Apr. 2026
Adjective
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Upending age-old narrative traditions, Paul’s heroism takes a sinister turn when Herbert reveals that the Bene Gesserit, an Illuminati-like secretive order of psychic matriarchs, has long been conditioning the Fremen to expect the arrival of a messiah, or mahdi, in their native tongue.—
Big Think,
Big Think,
29 Apr. 2026
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This advertised butt jokes, campy fight montages and sinister Seth Rogen laughs.—
Clare Mulroy,
USA Today,
28 Apr. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Predictive.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/predictive. Accessed 2 May. 2026.
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