1. trans. To look in the face of; fig. to face (danger, etc.); to look straight at.
1820. Keats, Hyperion, II. 204. To envisage circumstance, all calm, That is the top of sovereignty.
1823. New Monthly Mag., VII. 328. Envisaging his fate With regal valour.
1879. G. Meredith, Egoist, II. v. 98. ‘Must I recognize the bitter truth…?’ ‘I have envisaged it.’
2. To obtain a mental view of, set before the mind’s eye; to contemplate; chiefly, to view or regard under a particular aspect.
1837. Herschel, in Babbage, Bridgew. Treat., App. i. 246. Envisaging the case algebraically.
1837. Jerrold, in New Monthly Mag., LI. 317. We could not perfectly envisage the atrocity.
1845–6. Trench, Huls. Lect., Ser. II. vi. 238. Men continually envisaged the highest benefits which their souls could attain.
1853. De Morgan, in Graves, Life Sir W. R. Hamilton, III. (1889), 443. If he [Argand] really envisaged the logarithmic property of the angles, he made a most decisive step.
1855. [Miss Cobbe], Ess. Intuitive Morals, 15. In whatever way we envisaged the moral attributes of God.
b. Philos. To perceive by intuition.
1860. Mansel, Prolegom. Log., iv. 116, note. I have availed myself of the term envisage, as the best English equivalent that has yet been proposed to the German anschauen.
1860. M‘Cosh, Intuit. Mind., 58 (Ogilv.). From the very dawn of existence the infant must envisage self, and body acting on self.
3. Of an object: To present itself under a particular aspect. rare.
1884. Pall Mall Gaz., 10 Oct., 5/1. The New England summer as it envisaged itself to the eyes of Thoreau.
Hence Envisagement, the action of presenting (an object) to one’s own consciousness. Envisaging vbl. sb., the action of the vb. ENVISAGE.
1877. E. Caird, Philos. Kant, II. viii. 365. This imaginative envisagement of the categories.
1883. W. Smart, Disciple Plato, 37. It is the envisaging of the one idea.
