retrodictv.
/ˌrɛtrə(ʊ)ˈdɪkt/, U.S. /ˌrɛtrəˈdɪk(t)/ 1. transitive. To make a retrodiction about (an earlier action or event). Cf. postdict v.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > mental capacity > understanding > reason, faculty of reasoning > process of reasoning, ratiocination > process of inferring, inference > infer, conclude [verb (transitive)] > based on hypothesis or data
educe1794
expound1821
generalizea1828
to put two and two together1849
extrapolate1905
retrodict1940
postdict1952
1940 H. H. Price Hume's Theory External World vi. 201 If these imaginative devices enable us to predict future sense-impressions, surely they must equally enable us to ‘retrodict’ past ones?
1951 W. H. Walsh Introd. Philos. Hist. ii. 41 Whilst it is certainly not the business of historians to predict the future, it is very much their business to ‘retrodict’ the past.
1988 Nature 10 Mar. 106/1 The ‘Standard Model’ of particle physics has not been able to retrodict, let alone predict, the masses of quarks and leptons.
1996 A. Walker & P. Shipman Wisdom of Bones ix. 161 We also retrodicted the mean temperature of a Neandertal.
2. intransitive. To make a retrodiction.
ΚΠ
1952 Mind 61 225 Attempts to predict or retrodict when no grounds for rational belief are obtainable.
1982 J. Campbell Grammatical Man i. iii. 50 One can ‘retrodict’ and say where it has been in the past.
1995 S. Tweyman David Hume xxiii. 296 Causal reasoning..operates on the basis of past uniformities and is useful only for predicting or retrodicting.
2002 R. W. Batterman Devil in Details iv. 56 The inability to retrodict is, therefore, even more pronounced—the initial mass m(0) is ‘unobservable’ in principle.
Derivatives
ˌretroˈdictable adj. able to be retrodicted.
ΚΠ
1955 A. C. Garnett Relig. & Moral Life vi. 134 A system of spatiotemporal events..which make the system to some extent predictable and ‘retrodictable’ as stretching indefinitely into the future and the past.
2006 M. Rabinowitz in P. V. Kreitler Trends Black Hole Res. iv. 21 If information is lost, then physical processes are not predictable, and worse yet, not even retrodictable.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, March 2010; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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v.1940