prodigy

From Middle English prodige (“portent”), from Latin prōdigium (“omen, portent, prophetic sign”).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈpɹɒdɪd͡ʒi/

• Audio (Southern England):

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• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈpɹɑdɪd͡ʒi/
• Hyphenation: prod‧i‧gy

prodigy (plural prodigies)

1. An extraordinary occurrence or creature; an anomaly, especially a monster; a freak. [from 16th c.]
2. An amazing or marvellous thing; a wonder. [from 17th c.]
   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter XXXII, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 153:

     He is never chased; he would run away with rope-walks of line. Prodigies are told of him.

3. A wonderful example of something. [from 17th c.]
   • 1959 October, T. W. E. Roche, “Traffic Working at Dover Marine Station”, in Railway Magazine, page 680:

     Traffic at Dover Marine has developed far beyond anything envisaged when the station was built. The layout has become rather cramped, and prodigies of organisation are performed annually by all concerned to save complete saturation.

4. An extremely talented person, especially a child. [from 17th c.]
5. (archaic) An extraordinary thing seen as an omen; a portent. [from 15th c.]
   • 1717, Homer, translated by Alexander Pope, “Book XII”, in The Iliad of Homer, volume III, London: […] W[illiam] Bowyer, for Bernard Lintott […], →OCLC:

     These on the farther bank now stood and gazed, / By Heaven alarm’d, by prodigies amazed: / A signal omen stopp’d the passing host, / Their martial fury in their wonder lost.

   • 1727, William Warburton, “Part I”, in A Critical and Philosophical Enquiry into the Causes of Prodigies and Miracles, as Related by Historians. […], London: […] Thomas Corbett, […], →OCLC, page 1:

     Prodigies and Portents have infected the beſt VVritings of Antiquity; and have ſo blotted and deformed our modern Annals, that (vvith greater Juſtice than Polybius has obſerv'd it, of the former) they may be rather called Tragedies than History.

   • 1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society, published 2012, page 87:

     John Foxe believed that special prodigies had heralded the Reformation.

• (extremely talented person): wunderkind, girl wonder, girl-genius, boy-genius, boy wonder, child prodigy.

• (extremely talented person): idiot savant, savant

• precocious
• prodigal
• child prodigy
• prodigy house

• “prodigy”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “prodigy”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “prodigy”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

• prodigy on Wikipedia.Wikipedia