anticipation

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The act of expecting or foreseeing something; expectation or presentiment.
• noun An expectation.
• noun Action taken in order to prevent or counteract something.
• noun The use or assignment of funds, especially from a trust fund, before they are legitimately available for use.
• noun Music Introduction on a weak beat of one note of a new chord before the previous chord is resolved.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The act of being before another in doing something; the act of taking up, placing, or considering something beforehand, before the proper time, or out of the natural order; prior action.
• noun Foretaste; realization in advance; previous view or impression of what is to happen afterward; expectation; hope: as, the anticipation of the joys of heaven.
• noun Previous notion; preconceived opinion, produced in the mind before the truth is known; slight previous impression; forecast.
• noun In logic, the term used since Cicero (Latin anticipatio) to translate the “prolepsis” (πρόληψις) of the Epicureans and Stoics.
• noun In medicine, the occurrence in the human body of any phenomenon, morbid or natural, before the usual time.
• noun In music, the introduction into a chord of one or more of the component notes of the chord which follows, producing a passing discord.
• noun In rhetoric, prolepsis.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The act of anticipating, taking up, placing, or considering something beforehand, or before the proper time in natural order.
• noun Previous view or impression of what is to happen; instinctive prevision; foretaste; antepast.
• noun Hasty notion; intuitive preconception.
• noun (Mus.) The commencing of one or more tones of a chord with or during the chord preceding, forming a momentary discord.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun The act of anticipating, taking up, placing, or considering something beforehand, or before the proper time in natural order.
• noun The eagerness associated with waiting for something to occur.
• noun finance Prepayment of a debt, generally in order to pay less interest.
• noun rhetoric Prolepsis.
• noun music a non-harmonic tone that is lower or higher than a note in the previous chord and a unison to a note in the next chord
• noun obsolete Hasty notion; intuitive preconception.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun anticipating with confidence of fulfillment
• noun something expected (as on the basis of a norm)
• noun the act of predicting (as by reasoning about the future)
• noun an expectation