envisage
verb
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Envisage this: a word is borrowed from French in the mid-17th century and sticks around to be used in the 21st. It’s not hard to picture; envisage is not alone in this accomplishment. Used today to mean “to have a mental picture of something, especially in advance of realization” and “to view or regard something in a certain way,” envisage for a time could also mean “to confront or face someone.” That use, which is now archaic, nods to the word’s origin: we borrowed envisage from French, but the visage part is from Anglo-French vis, meaning “face.” (It reaches back ultimately to Greek idein, “to see.”) Visage is of course also an English word. It entered English much earlier, in the 14th century, and is typically used today in literary contexts to refer to a person’s face. Envisage isn’t necessarily restricted to literary contexts, but it does have a formal tone. Its near twin envision (“to picture to oneself”), which has been with us since the 19th century, is interchangeable with envisage in many contexts and is somewhat less formal.
Synonyms
Examples of envisage in a Sentence
Patrick Boyland, The Athletic, 7 Jan. 2025
The new, 74-section law envisages fines of $800 for first offenses and $1,500 for second offenses, followed by prison terms of up to 15 years for third offenses.
—Amir Vahdat and Nasser Karimi, Los Angeles Times, 18 Dec. 2024
The bill envisages that the Treasury would create a program to buy 200,000 bitcoins annually for five years until the stockpile hit one million tokens.
—Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss and Lisa Pauline Mattackal, USA TODAY, 17 Dec. 2024
The partners did not give details on their upcoming collaborations but said the partnership envisages multiple projects.
—Melanie Goodfellow, Deadline, 8 Dec. 2024
See all Example Sentences for envisage 
Dictionary Entries Near envisage
Cite this Entry
“Envisage.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/envisage. Accessed 18 Jan. 2025.
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envisage
verb
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