cautious
Careful to avoid danger or mistakes.
- Ever cautious, Dad tested the ice with a stick before letting us near the pond.
- The cautious hedgehog sniffed the air carefully before creeping out from under the hedge.
Similar: careful, watchful, alert
cautious or prudent?
Cautious is about the danger in front of you. Prudent is about the one that has not arrived yet.
Because both words mean careful, children treat them as the same word with different spellings. They are not.
Cautious is a response to something already there: a cautious dad tests the ice with a stick before letting anyone near the pond. The danger is present, and the care is a reaction to it.
Prudent is care in advance, when nothing has gone wrong yet and might never. A prudent person packs the raincoat while the sky is still perfectly clear. That is why prudent so often turns up in writing about money and planning, where the risk is always in the future.
Both words, side by side
prudent
Careful and sensible, thinking ahead before you act.
- It was prudent to pack a raincoat, even though the sky looked perfectly clear.
- It is prudent to save some pocket money each week instead of spending it all on sweets.
Similar: wise, careful, sensible
Why it costs marks
In a verbal reasoning question asking for the closest match, both words will sometimes be offered together. Knowing that one looks at now and the other looks ahead is what separates them when the options are deliberately close.
Definitions and example sentences on this page are the ones a child sees inside Wordrealm, taken from our list of over 1,100 words. It is free to browse, with nothing to sign up for.
Sitting the 11+ in Kent, Medway or Buckinghamshire?
Plain-English guides to each test, from the councils’ own pages: Kent Test · Medway Test · Bucks Secondary Transfer Test