Soothsayer is a compound of sooth ('truth') + sayer ('one who says'), literally 'one who speaks truth'; from Old English sōth ('truth') + secgan ('to say'). Originally 'a truth-teller', later 'one who predicts the future'. The historical chain includes Old English sōth and Old English secgan. Older glosses in the chain include "truth", "one who says", "one who speaks truth", and "to say", which help explain the semantic range of the modern word. Morphologically, soothsayer is best read as compound and borrowing, yielding an English noun shaped by both form history and later usage. In current English it functions as a noun, with the sense "a person who predicts the future; a seer". related forms include soothsay and sooth. The result is an English noun whose etymology preserves the older forms while supporting the word's specialized modern meaning.