Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In Roman antiquity, divination by inspection of entrails.
Wiktionary
- n. uncountable Haruspicy: the study and divination by use of animal entrails, usually the victims of sacrifice.
- n. countable A specific instance of such divination.
Etymologies
- From Latin extispicium. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“The very rites of Etruscans which were designed to divine the future from the internal organs of sheep, themselves imported traditions traced back to Babylonian extispicy, are necessarily built on a lost metaphor of the Earth, not only as cold, dark and moist but also a living deity, complete with innards.”
“This magical pattern is, oddly enough, an abstract representation of the "bowels of the earth" and a reference to both the divinatory practice of extispicy and an ancient conception of the journey of the sun under the horizon during the course of the night2.”
“One link online concerning Babylonian haruspicy i.e. the practice of divining the future through sheep livers may oddly enough help us shed some light on Etruscan rites, beliefs and cosmology: Sacrificial divination: Confirmation of extispicy.”
“The labyrinth is the Minoan conception of the underworld, the winding entrails of the earth cf. extispicy.”
More about egg symbols in Etruria and the rest of the classical world
“For, in the present excited condition of our river-towns, men do not strive to copy the moderate virtues of the Ancients, but only to exaggerate their heathenish extispicy.”
“paleoglot anatolian babylonian germanic internet italic ludology eteo-cretan extispicy game programming”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘extispicy’.
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phrontistery - e
from phrontistery.info
ecclesiarchy, ecclesiastry, ecdemomania, echinuliform, echoism, echolalia, echopraxia, eclaircise, ?claircissement, eclat, ?clat, eclegme and 616 more...
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C. S. Bird – Grandiloquent Dictionary
All the words from the Grandiloquent Dictionary.
946 of these 2700 words do not yield any results in six different dictionaries, hence many of them might be misspellings.
More in...abacinate, abcedarian, abderian, ablegate, abligurition, ablutophobia, abnormous, acarophobia, acathasia, accipitrine, accidia, accubitus and 2690 more...
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...:::bella:::...
originally started as an attempt to collect words I found visually and auditorially beautiful, as well as psychically evocative, this has become nothing more than a grab bag of word curiosities, a ...
bergamot, jambalaya, bee's knees, heliotrope, hosanna, gamboge, aureole, filial, madrigal, multilingual, sacrosanct, sojourn and 1072 more...
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jmjarmstrong's list
Words that I used to know.
geloscopy, hunker, willy nilly, harum scarum, whacko, meh, nork, misunderestimate, atrabiliousness, luftmensch, auxanometer, hyperhedonia and 1948 more...
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polysyllabary
high dudgeon, plumb, scarify, scabrous, zero-sum game, grind, sesquipedaliophobia, scraffito, shekel, luthier, baffle, conflate and 80 more...
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Simply Divine
Methods of divination.
necromancy, aeromancy, astrology, bibliomancy, dowsing, extispicy, geomancy, graphology, hagiomancy, hieromancy, numerology, oneiromancy and 20 more...
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religous
soteriology, haruspex, sympathetic magic, cargo cult, songline, deus ex machina, augury, bibliomancy, iconoclasm, teleology, eschatology, zoolatry and 70 more...
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Words to live by
aborescent, geotaxis, teratogen, fulvous, uremic, rutilant, murated, contuded, benison, deontic, diapason, frisson and 47 more...
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taking the auspices
Being kinds of and related to divination.
augur, catoptromancy, aleuromancy, aeromancy, austromancy, ceraunoscopy, chaomancy, nephomancy, meteormancy, ailuromancy, alectryomancy, gyromancy and 69 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for extispicy.
jmjarmstrong JM is gutted by extispicy. May 9, 2011
madmouth what won't they divinate on!? May 21, 2009
avivamagnolia Divination using entrails Jan 17, 2009
lampbane Divination using the remains of sacrificed animals. Nov 30, 2007