prepense

Back-formation from prepensed, probably from Anglo-Norman prepenser.

• IPA^(key): /pɹɪˈpɛns/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛns

prepense

1. Devised, contrived, or planned beforehand; preconceived, premeditated.

• malice prepense

prepense (third-person singular simple present prepenses, present participle prepensing, simple past and past participle prepensed)

1. (obsolete, transitive) To weigh or consider beforehand; to intend.
   • 1531, Thomas Elyot, edited by Ernest Rhys, The Boke Named the Governour […] (Everyman’s Library), London: J[oseph] M[alaby] Dent & Co; New York, N.Y.: E[dward] P[ayson] Dutton & Co, published [1907], →OCLC:

     All these thinges prepensed and gathered together seriously

   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto XI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     submit you to high prouidence, / And euer in your noble hart prepense, / That all the sorrow in the world is lesse, / Then vertues might [...].

2. (obsolete) To deliberate beforehand.