anticipate

anticipate

1. Here lies another of the great usage battlegrounds, where the conflict is all the more fraught for overlapping meanings that confuse the issue. The two primary and undisputed meanings are (1) to be aware of (a thing) in advance and act accordingly (e.g.

• Lecky has anticipated what the animal liberationists are now saying —Listener, 1983)

and (2) to forestall (a person) and take action before they do (e.g.

• I'm sorry —do go on, I did not mean to anticipate you —John Le Carré).

2. Fowler scornfully rejected a third meaning, to expect or foresee (e.g.

• Wing mirrors were selling better than they had ever anticipated —Margaret Drabble, 1987

• They have every right to be there, and we do not anticipate any change in that status —USA Today, 1988

• One would not expect Cleopatra to have suffered such a fate, nor did she herself anticipate it —A. Fraser, 1988).

This meaning was formerly classed as ‘disputed’ in successive editions of the Concise Oxford Dictionary but in the current (2006) edition, and in the larger Oxford Dictionary of English (2003), it is placed first without any comment as (comfortably) the dominant sense, with the definition ‘to regard as probable’. Like expect, it can be followed either by a noun or noun phrase (She anticipated scorn on her return to the theatre) or by a that-clause (It was anticipated that the rains would slow the military campaign). Despite its wide currency, however, it can still irritate more traditional readers (and listeners), perhaps because it is an ugly word compared with the more elegant and straightforward alternative expect.