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  1. ornithomancy love

Definitions

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. Divination by means of birds; ornithoscopy; augury.

Wiktionary

  1. n. Divination by means of birds, their flight, etc.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. Divination by means of birds, their flight, etc.

Etymologies

  1. Ancient Greek (Wiktionary)

Examples

  • “She lurked by the fire in the heavily perfumed tower room, interrupting Professor Trelawney's increasingly hysterical talks with difficult questions about ornithomancy and heptomology, insisting that she predicted students 'answers before they gave them and demanding that she demonstrate her skill at the crystal ball, the tea leaves and the rune stones in turn.”

    Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

  • “This chapter in the great volume of superstition was indeed cultivated with unusual solicitude amongst the Pagans -- _ornithomancy_ grew into an elaborate science.”

    Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers

  • “Tourism bosses in Worcestershire have compiled a modern guide to romantic ornithomancy.”

    Medindia Health News

  • “Single girls who want to find out who they'll fall in love with should go birdwatching on Valentine's Day, according to an ancient art called ornithomancy.”

    Medindia Health News

  • “Other sets of synonyms include, in addition to the aforementioned haruspicy and haruspication: caloptromancy and enoptromancy; spodomancy and tephramancy (or tephromancy); alectryomancy and alectoromancy; astromancy and sideromancy; crystallomancy and gastromancy; hieromancy and hieroscopy; necromancy and sciomancy; ornithomancy and orniscopy; and scapulimancy and omoplatoscopy.”

    Verbatim: VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol VI No 2

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reverse dictionary (2)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. ornithomantic
  1. ornithoscopy

tags (3)

Free-form, user-generated categorization

  1. mancy
  1. bird
  1. divination

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Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘ornithomancy’.

Comments

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  • vanishedone

    An ox or an ass that may happen to pass,
    A voice in the street, or a slave that you meet,
    A name or a word by chance overheard,
    If you deem it an omen, you call it a Bird;
    And if birds are your omens, it clearly will follow
    That birds are a proper prophetic Apollo.

    Chorus of Birds - Aristophenes, translated by John Hookham Frere. Apr 26, 2008

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‘ornithomancy’ has been looked up 980 times, added to 14 lists, commented on 1 time, and has a Scrabble score of 22.