Word.ws English Dictionary

hippomancy

hippomancy noun: divination by the interpretation of the appearance and behaviour of horses. Their neighing and stamping are particularly noted.

Noun

hippomancy (uncountable)

  1. Divination by the interpretation of the appearance and behaviour of horses. Their neighing and stamping are particularly noted.
    • Hippomantia ex hinnitu, fremitu, sudore..1713 Fabricii Bibliographia Antiquaria xii.
    • There is also a trace of hippomancy in Persia. According to Herodotus (iii. 84-87), after Darius and six other Persian nobles had slain the pseudo-Smerdis, they agreed that he should be king whose horse should first neigh after sunrise, when they had mounted their steeds.1911 Encyc. of Religion & Ethics

Origin of hippomancy

From hippo- + -mancy.

Questions about hippomancy

What does hippomancy mean?
Hippomancy means divination by the interpretation of the appearance and behaviour of horses. Their neighing and stamping are particularly noted.
What part of speech is hippomancy?
Hippomancy is a noun.

Words near hippomancy in the dictionary

  1. Hippolyta
  2. Hippolytan
  3. Hippolyte
  4. hippolytid
  5. hippolytids
  6. hippomancy
  7. hippomanes
  8. hippomania
  9. hippomelanin
  10. Hippomenes
  11. hippometer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hippomancy (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: “hippomancy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hippomancy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.