# psychic

Pronunciation: US say "SY-kik" /ˈsaɪkɪk/; UK

## Noun

1. A person who has, or appears to have, extrasensory abilities such as precognition, clairvoyance and telepathy, or who seems open to paranormal or supernatural influences.
   - Simple: A person who seems able to see the future, read minds, or feel things like ghosts and spirits.
   - _The detective was skeptical when a self-described psychic called with a tip about the missing boy._
   - _As a child he was sure he was a psychic, because he often knew who was calling before the phone rang._
3. A person who is said to contact the dead; a medium.
   - Simple: A person who says they can talk to people who have died.
   - _The widow hired a psychic to hold a séance and reach her late husband._
   - _Halfway through the evening, the psychic claimed that the house's former owner was speaking through her._
5. In the threefold division of humankind taught by the gnostic Valentinus, a person of the second type, focused on intellectual reality rather than on matter or spirit.
   - Simple: In the teachings of the gnostic thinker Valentinus, a person of the second of three kinds, who lives mainly through the mind.
   - _In the Valentinian scheme, the psychic stands above the hylic but below the pneumatic._
   - _A psychic, on this view, lives by reason and faith but has not yet reached the knowledge of the spirit._

## Adjective

2. Having the powers of a psychic, or relating to perception beyond the ordinary senses.
   - Simple: Able to know things without being told, or having to do with that kind of power.
   - _Grandma swore she had a psychic gift for knowing when bad news was on its way._
   - _The lab ran a series of psychic experiments in which volunteers tried to guess hidden cards._
4. Relating to the mind or psyche, or to mental activity in general.
   - Simple: Having to do with the mind and how it works.
   - _Years of bullying left psychic scars that took far longer to heal than her bruises._
   - _The novelist cares less about plot than about the psychic lives of her characters._

## Origin

From Ancient Greek ψυχικός (psukhikós, "relating to the soul, spirit, mind"), or from ψυχή (psukhḗ, "soul, mind, psyche"); the earlier English form was psychical. It first appeared as a noun in 1871.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/psychic (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).