clairvoyante
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Etymology: From French clairvoyante.
Senses: examples: text: In her sleep-waking state, she could distinguish the magnetic passes that I had made over a glass of water, they appearing darker than the water itself; and when she was very clairvoyante, she could by this means tell me how many passes I had made, and did so always correctly. […] 4th, The sleep-waking state, when she was clairvoyante, and prescribed. […] In the perfect sleep-waking state, the spirit had the supremacy; and, when she was perfectly clairvoyante, she said her thoughts proceeded wholly from the spirit, and the epigastric region.
ref: 1845, Justinus Kerner, translated by [Catherine] Crowe, The Seeress of Prevorst: Being Revelations Concerning the Inner-Life of Man, and the Inter-Diffusion of a World of Spirits in the One We Inhabit, London: J. C. Moore, […], pages 65 and 108:
text: The clairvoyante lady was asked about it, and confessing inability to answer, Mr. Eagle suggested that the gentleman should confide to him what he had written on the paper.
ref: 1851 July, Z., “A Trickster Tricked”, in Thomas Wakley, editor, The Lancet. […], volume II, London: […] George Churchill, […], published 6 September 1851, page 242, column 2:
text: “[…] Strathmore, am I, who read you so well while you were yet unknown, likely to believe in your suave words so quickly? Remember! I am clairvoyante. I know the sincerity of every one who approaches me, and I know the worth of your words, my diplomatist! I shall be a very long time before I accord to you the honour of any belief in them.” / “If you be clairvoyante, you will no longer disbelieve; you will see without words what your sorcery works. You must know your own power too well to doubt it!”
ref: 1865, Ouida [pseudonym; Maria Louise Ramé], “The Charm of the Rose”, in Strathmore: A Romance […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, pages 237–238:
text: A clairvoyante lady gave Jane a prescription, and assured her if she took it, and followed her advice, she would be cured, impiously adding that the Almighty himself could not have prescribed so well for her as she had done.
ref: 1867, John Ashburner, Notes and Studies in the Philosophy of Animal Magnetism and Spiritualism. With Observations upon Catarrh, Bronchitis, Rheumatism, Gout, Scrofula, and Cognate Diseases., London: H. Baillière, […], page 260:
text: He had also sent a lock of his hair to a sprightly and intelligent French lady, a Mademoiselle de Cramponaye, who had thereupon written him a prescription, and whom he had afterwards visited at her residence on the ‘other side’ of Oxford Street, where, a younger sister having performed over her some mesmeric passes, she became clairvoyante, and in her turn mesmerised the blind man, though it was permissible during the séance to converse upon subjects less mysterious.
ref: 1881, Violet Fane [pseudonym; Mary Montgomerie Currie], Sophy, or The Adventures of a Savage, volume I, London: Hurst and Blackett, […], page 147:
text: She became clairvoyante, had prophetic dreams and visions, and prescribed for herself when in the trance-state.
ref: 1883 November 10, “Review. Pioneers of the Spiritual Reformation. I.—Dr. Justinus Kerner.”, in Light: A Journal of Psychical, Occult, and Mystical Research, volume III, number 149, page 492, column 2:
text: She became clairvoyante; persons of distinction came to consult her on difficult spiritual questions, to the exclusion of the parish priest, who found himself at a discount.
ref: 1903, E[mily] Kislingbury, “Some Thoughts on Vicarious Suffering”, in Annie Besant, G[eorge] R[obert] S[tow] Mead, editors, The Theosophical Review, volume XXXI, London: Theosophical Publishing Society […], page 449:
text: “Really, Evelyn,” said Lady Julia, “you mustn’t dismiss my visitors. Lesley was describing to me the garden of the late Duca di Sermoneta (the Dante commentator) at his palace in the Alban mountains. She is, like myself, clairvoyante.” […] Was he also becoming clairvoyant?
ref: 1908, Helen Hester Colvill, Lady Julia’s Emerald, London: John Lane, The Bodley Head; New York, N.Y.: John Lane Company, pages 215 and 313:
text: This singularly clairvoyante woman, “released from the strain of her wrath and the rigidity of her injured virtue,” now pushes her conclusions further, and admits that in her twenty-seven years of married happiness she hasn’t cared enough to find out that James had built up the family fortune by “disabling his clerks from marrying and by driving his girls on to the streets.”
ref: 1914 March 21, “A Man and His Wife”, in The Nation, volume XIV, number 25, page 1050, column 1:
text: It was perhaps five in the morning when a voice spoke and he started up with a horrid jerk—the voice of that clairvoyante woman.
ref: 1917, Algernon Blackwood, Day and Night Stories, New York, N.Y.: E[dward] P[ayson] Dutton & Co. […], page 167:
text: I suppose you’ll call me a fool, if I say it was to see one of those clairvoyante women, someone Ireen had heard of.
ref: 1924, E. M. Delafield [pseudonym; Edmée Elizabeth Monica Dashwood], Messalina of the Suburbs, London: Hutchinson & Co. […], page 118:
text: She had gone to a clairvoyante woman in Bond Street—a fortune-teller who had said in the Press that she knew where the Earl of Quorn could be found.
ref: 1934, Sydney Horler, Tiger Standish Comes Back, London: Hutchinson & Co. […], page 227:
text: Many as were her gifts, she was, this minute, impaled on the lack of one – she was not clairvoyante.
ref: 1964, Elizabeth Bowen, The Little Girls, London: Jonathan Cape […], page 92:
glosses: feminine of clairvoyant