Word.ws English Dictionary

apantomancy

apantomancy noun: divination by chance meetings with any objects that present themselves, most commonly animals; for example, the superstition associated with a black cat crossing one's path.

Noun

apantomancy (uncountable)

  1. Divination by chance meetings with any objects that present themselves, most commonly animals; for example, the superstition associated with a black cat crossing one's path.
    • Apantomancy: Divination by means of any objects which happen to present themselves. To this class belong the omens drawn from chance meetings with a hare, an eagle, etc.1920, Lewis Spence, An Encyclopædia of Occultism
    • Even objects that lie about haphazardly were fit for mantic purposes. The prcatice was called apantomancy.1961, H.E. Wedeck, Treasury of Witchcraft

Origin of apantomancy

From Ancient Greek ἀπαντάω (apantáō, “to encounter”) and μαντεία (manteía, “prophecy”).

Questions about apantomancy

What does apantomancy mean?
Apantomancy means divination by chance meetings with any objects that present themselves, most commonly animals; for example, the superstition associated with a black cat crossing one's path.
What part of speech is apantomancy?
Apantomancy is a noun.

Words near apantomancy in the dictionary

  1. apanthropinisation
  2. apanthropinization
  3. apanthropinizations
  4. apanthropy
  5. Apanto
  6. apantomancy
  7. APAP
  8. apapane
  9. apapanes
  10. Apaporis
  11. apapransa

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: apantomancy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “apantomancy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/apantomancy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.