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PRODIGY
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
An impressive or wonderful example of a particular quality
Example:
the Marines are expected to perform prodigies of valor
Classified under:
Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents
Hypernyms ("prodigy" is a kind of...):
example; exemplar; good example; model (something to be imitated)
Derivation:
prodigious (so great in size or force or extent as to elicit awe)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A sign of something about to happen
Example:
he looked for an omen before going into battle
Synonyms:
omen; portent; presage; prodigy; prognostic; prognostication
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("prodigy" is a kind of...):
augury; foretoken; preindication; sign (an event that is experienced as indicating important things to come)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "prodigy"):
auspice (a favorable omen)
foreboding (an unfavorable omen)
death knell (an omen of death or destruction)
Derivation:
prodigious (of momentous or ominous significance)
Sense 3
Meaning:
An unusually gifted or intelligent (young) person; someone whose talents excite wonder and admiration
Example:
she is a chess prodigy
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("prodigy" is a kind of...):
brain; brainiac; Einstein; genius; mastermind (someone who has exceptional intellectual ability and originality)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "prodigy"):
boy wonder (an extremely talented young male person)
child prodigy; infant prodigy; wonder child (a prodigy whose talents are recognized at an early age)
girl wonder (an extremely talented young female person)
Context examples:
One day, in discourse, my master, having heard me mention the nobility of my country, was pleased to make me a compliment which I could not pretend to deserve: that he was sure I must have been born of some noble family, because I far exceeded in shape, colour, and cleanliness, all the Yahoos of his nation, although I seemed to fail in strength and agility, which must be imputed to my different way of living from those other brutes; and besides I was not only endowed with the faculty of speech, but likewise with some rudiments of reason, to a degree that, with all his acquaintance, I passed for a prodigy.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Mrs. Goddard was the mistress of a School—not of a seminary, or an establishment, or any thing which professed, in long sentences of refined nonsense, to combine liberal acquirements with elegant morality, upon new principles and new systems—and where young ladies for enormous pay might be screwed out of health and into vanity—but a real, honest, old-fashioned Boarding-school, where a reasonable quantity of accomplishments were sold at a reasonable price, and where girls might be sent to be out of the way, and scramble themselves into a little education, without any danger of coming back prodigies.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
In this terrible agitation of mind, I could not forbear thinking of Lilliput, whose inhabitants looked upon me as the greatest prodigy that ever appeared in the world; where I was able to draw an imperial fleet in my hand, and perform those other actions, which will be recorded for ever in the chronicles of that empire, while posterity shall hardly believe them, although attested by millions.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
