Alice Twain used the word "prospicient" in a recent post in the Italy travel talk section:

quote:

since it's prospicient one of the city doors

That caught my eye, since it's not a word I'd seen before.

I Googled "prospicient" and came up with the definition "having foresight." Google found just 1,490 uses of the word on the entire Web.

But...

When I Googled "prospicienti" - Google found 154,000 examples of the word on the Web.

Obviously - it's a lot more popular in Italian than it is in English.

But my sense is "prospicienti" doesn't translate as "having foresight" in Italian. What does it mean in italiano?

Here is a translation. It means "overlooking".

P.S. www.wordreference.com is very handy for Italian-English and English-Italian translations. It's not complete, but useful for most everyday vocabulary.

If I may add to Zerlina's explanation, the context is like in "facing": "a terrace overlooking (or facing) the Bay of Naples".

Prospiciente in Italian means "che guarda verso", "che si affaccia su" qualcosa. It's usually used for balconies, parts of buildings in general: L'appartamento ha una terrazza prospiciente il Duomo
or in geographical descriptions: La costa prospiciente l'isola d'Elba
It's not exactly a very common word...
Apparently the origin of the word is latin "prospicere": look ahead (or something similar), hence the English meaning. (I googled to find the origin of the word ).

Ups! I was slow and someone answered already!

Yes, the dangers of translating from Italian to English by means of a dictionary are fraught with danger for the unwary!

Marian, my problem is that I never use a dictionary and rely solely on my brain. Therefore, the interferences...

Here's my version of that: How many times have I doublechecked the dictionary (or other reference book) regarding something about which I was absolutely certain, only to find that I was, in fact, wrong! How could I possibly have been wrong??? I suppose it does happen!

quote:

Originally posted by Zerlina:
Here is a translation. It means "overlooking".

P.S. www.wordreference.com is very handy for Italian-English and English-Italian translations. It's not complete, but useful for most everyday vocabulary.

Zerlina: I use that web site to write my essays for my Italian class. The site is a bit overwhelming, which means it's good since I'm easily overwhelmed at this point in my studies. Cheers