Vaticinium ex eventu

Vaticinium ex eventu may sound like a tough word, but let me break it down for you. It is a Latin phrase used to describe something that was predicted after it has already happened.

Imagine you tell your friend that it will rain tomorrow, and it actually rains the next day. This isn't vaticinium ex eventu because you made the prediction before the event happened.

However, if it had already rained and then you told your friend that it was going to rain, that would be an example of vaticinium ex eventu because you are predicting something that has already happened! It's like saying you knew something was going to happen before it happened, even though you didn't actually know.

This concept is often used in history and literature when people make predictions that seem really accurate, but in reality, they were just writing about something that had already happened!