Spatulamancy? Sounds like kitchen witchery to me!

Spatulamancy is divination using the shoulder blade of an animal (click the link for an exhaustive dilation on my crude definition).

Here's one of my favourites.

Kephalonomancy. This is a method of determining guilt or innocence by placing burning coals upon the baked head of either an ass or a goat while the names of suspects are read aloud; If a crackling sound coincides with the utterance of a name, that person is guilty.

Who needs a jury?

Here's a good link.

PM, I wonder how many of these are real words and how many were invented by this dictionary to describe specific actions.

Transatuaumancy: Divination through chance remarks overheard in a crowd.

since 1500.. e.g.

psst.. the Black Death is coming back.. don't pass it on.

>>And anyway, what word isn't invented to describe something? Hello.

Yes, but words are a means of communication. If someone simply invents a word, for the sake of inventing it, and it is not clear what it means, or is counter-intuitive, then it is a foolish thing to have done.

For example, the Spatulamancy word you mention. This word is counter-intuitive because a shoulder-blade is a scapula NOT a spatula.

So the person who invented that word was communicating improperly and it is an incorrect invention.

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EDIT:

It's bugging me...I'm trying to figure out a better word than "incorrect" for the last sentence above. I mean that it is a word that isn't clear, there would be a better way of describing the type of devination, and that there is no point in inventing such a word if an other one would be clearer.

So, I don't know if "incorrect" is the best word to use, but there you go, I can't think of the right term at this moment.

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Sheesh, they can't even spell Phoné properly!

Allo Myridon,

I do understand that, but the devination is done with a shoulder-blade, so it would be more easily understood as a scapulomancy or scapulamancy (don't know what the rules are for an "o" or "a") since that is more pertinent to the act.

There would be less chance of misinterpretation, and it would actually be easier to intuit what the word meant.

What I'm saying is, why invent a word that is not clear, when a clearer one would do the trick?

>Yes, but words are a means of communication. If someone simply invents a word...


I can understand your frustration.

But, firstly, these words (most of them at least) originate from the middle-ages, which was an extremely active time for the occult sciences. Even the queen (Elizabeth the I) had her own occultist for hexxing enemies and foretelling her future (Mr John Dee). They accordingly had a whole bunch of words for their activities, just like all our techy words today which would look just as unfathomable to a 15-century occultist and these do to you.

Secondly, I imagine some of these words are meant to be exclusionary; specialist vocabularies sometimes do have a way of trying to keep outsiders out.

Thirdly, is this really a place to have to defend obscure words? Isn't that one of the reasons people come here? To discuss words, and among them, obscure words? It's not like I threw these words into a sentence without explaining myself. I have posted them for discussion in a word forum because they are unusual. If the meaning of a word can be entirely taken for granted, there's not really a lot to discuss, is there?

But of course this is a place to discuss words, obscure ones, commonplace ones, new ones, the new tecky ones, aye, all of them, PM. That’s why it’s fun.

Wasn’t that what we were doing?

I thought the discussion was interesting. Like your point about the words being exclusionary. It's a point I don't remember having discussed before and one that could start a new thread.

aeromancy -- divination by reading contrails (also membership in the Mile High Club)

alectryomancy -- divination by becoming a lightning rod and reading the burn marks on your body (very few practitioners.)

aleuromancy -- divination by examining foxy ladies

alphitomancy -- divination by throwing something against the side of a mountain

amniomancy -- divination by reading tea leaves in a tea bag

anthropomancy -- divination by asking men (guaranteed to be wrong)

apantomancy -- divination by reading the varicose veins on bare buttocks

arithmomancy -- divination by counts (for peers only)

armomancy -- divination by throwing swords up in the air over a grid

aspidomancy -- divination by getting rid of spider webs and seeing what's left

astragalomancy -- divination by asking cosmonettes

astromancy -- see astragalomancy

axinomancy -- divination by questioning a James Bond villain

batanomancy -- divination by conductors

belomancy -- divination by shouting loudly

Bibliomancy -- divination by grabbing a random book in a library

capnomancy -- divination by asking the commander of a boat

catopromancy -- divination by reading the hairs on the tip of a cat's ears

causimonancy -- divination by listening to the cries of crows (Kansas City area only)

cephalonomancy -- divination by looking at the wrinkles on penises

ceromancy -- divination by examining the love life of marine animals

chaomancy -- divination by reading the leftovers in Chinese restaurants

cheromancy -- divination by reading the plastic surgery scars all over a certain actress

chiromancy -- divination by reading the Nile mud flats outside a large Egyptian city

choeromancy -- divination by grabbing a task out of the job jar

clidomancy -- divination by reading the bullet holes in the body of Bonnie's friend

coscinomancy --divination by reading the price sheets at a membership warehouse

daphnomancy -- divination by interpreting what a cartoon duck is trying to say

empyromancy-- Dvination by sticking pins in an Asimov novel

gastromancy -- divination by listening to stomach rumblings

geomancy -- divination by reading the oil drips from an inexpensive General Motors product

gyromancy -- divination by reading the leftovers in a Greek sandwich shop

halomancy -- divination by reading the auras around a saint

hippomancy -- divination by studying the wrinkles on the backs of certain large mammals

hydromancy -- divination by doing pencil rubbings of large fire department water sources

ichthyomancy -- divination by interpreting the various fish signs on the back ends of automobiles

margaritomancy -- divination by trying to figure out the lyrics to Jimmy Buffett songs

mechanomancy-- see geomancy

meteoromancy -- divination of the wrinkles in fat people

moleomancy -- divination by tracing the burrows of underground mammals

molybdomancy -- divination by trying to figure out the meaning of utterances of a certain Wookie (the one who flew in the molybdenum falcon)

myomancy -- dvination by following the path of a random cursor on a computer screen

omphalomancy -- dvination by interpreting the sounds of the guy who chants a mantra (the om fellow)

onimancy -- divination by reading the rings of an onion

onomancy -- divination by trying to figure out the art of Lennon's widow

onomatomancy -- divination by trying to figure out the art of Lennon

oömancy -- divination by reading your own mistakes

ornithomancy -- divination by reading the landing tracks of a Burroughs flying machine

pegomancy -- divination by asking my wife

rhapsodomancy -- divination by listening to the sounds of heavy metal

scatomancy -- divination by readin the tracks of a shooed-off cat

spatulamancy -- divination by a minimum wage earner

sternomancy -- divination by sniffing odd substances

sycomancy -- divination by reading blood spatters on a shower curtain

tiromancy -- divination by reading skidmarks

transatuaumancy == divination by sticking pins into a bus schedule

tyromancy -- divination of trolldom by studying the natterings of ostensibly new persons at AWAD talk

urimancy -- divination by reading the stress patters of bent silverware
uromancy -- divination by reading the yellow snow

xylomancy -- divination by reading droppings of circus animals, but only those in the t(h)ree rings

Thanks for listing the definitions TEd. bec-bec. (OH, and I do not shout loudly)


>>>avocado green nylon cooking implements


EDIT: typo