sibyl

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The Word of the Day for April 29 is:

sibyl   \SIB-ul\   noun, often capitalized
     1 : any of several prophetesses usually accepted as 10 in 
number and credited to widely separate parts of the ancient 
world (as Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, and Italy)
    *2 a : prophetess  b : fortune-teller

Example sentence:
     Grandmother had a knack for foretelling the future, and her 
reputation as an extraordinarily gifted sibyl increased with 
each correct prediction.

Did you know?
     The original "Sibyl" (her Greek name was "Sibylla") was an 
old woman who made predictions in an ecstatic frenzy; by the 5th 
century B.C. she was no more than a legendary figure in Greek 
mythology, but her prophecies, in Greek hexameters, were handed 
down in writing. She must have been good at prophesying, because 
her name came to be used as a title for the varied "sibyls" at 
oracle centers dispersed throughout the ancient world. Middle-
English speakers eventually borrowed modified forms of "sibylla" 
("sibile," "sybylle") to refer to those same ancient 
prophetesses. By the time we began to use the word to refer to 
prophetesses and female fortune-tellers in general, in the late 
16th century, we had arrived at our modern spelling.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.