1. To cause someone to act or to make a person decide to do something: "Fortunately, she was prompted to change her mind about going on the trip."
2. To cause something to happen.
3. To provide actors during a performance with words or lines they have forgotten: "The actor had to be prompted often in the first scene of the play."
4. To indicate or to suggest something which a person should say, or to give a reminder to a speaker.
5. Etymology: from Latin promptus, literally, "brought forth", and so, "visible, apparent, evident, manifest" from the past participle of promere, "to take or to bring out or forth"; from pro-emere, from pro-, "before, forward + emere, "to take".