extispicy

/ɛkˈstɪspɪsi/

extispicy noun: synonym of haruspicy: the study and divination by use of animal entrails, usually the victims of sacrifice.

Noun

extispicy (plural extispicies)

(uncountable) Synonym of haruspicy: the study and divination by use of animal entrails, usually the victims of sacrifice.
- They became experts in what is called extispicy, or the readings of organs of sacrificed animals.2007, Michael O'Neal, J. Sydney Jones, Neil Schlager, Jayne Weisblatt, World religions, volume 1, part 1, page 53
- ... to avoid wasting the enormous amounts of carcasses that in Mari, as elsewhere in Mesopotamia, were the products of the frequent killing of animals, almost exclusively sheep, for extispicy and omen taking.2004, Cristiano Grottanelli, Lucio Milano, Food and Identity in the Ancient World
Synonyms:

haruspicy
(countable) A specific instance of such divination.
- This image has been interpreted as the performance of “an extispicy on an animal whose flesh the king will later eat."2010, Ada Cohen, Steven E. Kangas, Assyrian Reliefs from the Palace of Ashurnasirpal II: A Cultural Biography

plural	extispicies

From Latin extispicium, from extispex (“diviner of entrails”) + -ium (forming abstract nouns).

What does extispicy mean?: Extispicy means synonym of haruspicy: the study and divination by use of animal entrails, usually the victims of sacrifice.
What part of speech is extispicy?: Extispicy is a noun.
How do you pronounce extispicy?: Extispicy is pronounced /ɛkˈstɪspɪsi/.
What is the plural of extispicy?: The plural of extispicy is extispicies.

Adapted from Wiktionary: extispicy (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: 2026-09-02

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