November 13, 2010 Word of the Day
RETRODICT \ret-ruh-DIKT\DEFINITION
verb

: to utilize present information or ideas to infer or explain (a past event or state of affairs)
EXAMPLES The technology enables scientists to retrodict past solar events and activities.

"Paleontologists attempting to retrodict body mass from fossilized dental remains must be aware of the effect that sample composition may have on their results." -- From an article in Science Letter, May 25, 2010
DID YOU KNOW? We predict that you will guess the correct origins of "retrodict," and chances are we will not contradict you. English speakers had started using "predict" by at least the early 17th century; it's a word formed by combining "prae-" (meaning "before") and "dicere" (meaning "to say"). Since the rough translation of "predict" is "to say before," it's no surprise that when people in the 1950s wanted a word for "predicting" the past, they created it by combining the prefix for "backward" ("retro-") with the "-dict" of "predict." Other "dicere" descendants in English include "contradict," "benediction," "dictate," "diction," and "dictionary."