From Oscar Wilde's *The Critic as Artist* (1891). Select the word that fits the blank. "Whenever men see the yellow snapdragon blossoming on the wall of Trinity they will think of that gracious undergraduate who saw in the flower's sure recurrence a ______ that he would abide for ever with the Benign Mother of his days."

The snapdragon's *sure recurrence* (its yearly return) was taken by the undergraduate Newman as an **omen or prediction** about his own future at the college (the *Benign Mother* = Alma Mater, Oxford). "Prophecy" — a foretelling — fits exactly: the recurring flower is read as a prediction that Newman would always belong to Trinity. The surrounding clause makes the meaning clear: *a prophecy that Faith, in her wisdom or her folly, suffered not to be fulfilled* — i.e. a foretelling that did not come true (Newman later converted to Catholicism and left Oxford).