Word.ws English Dictionary

macharomancy

macharomancy noun: divination by interpreting swords, daggers and knives. This was popular in Scotland where on July 31st it was performed to predict the deaths and marriages of the following year.

Noun

macharomancy (uncountable)

  1. Divination by interpreting swords, daggers and knives. This was popular in Scotland where on July 31st it was performed to predict the deaths and marriages of the following year.
    • Macharomancy, by knives or swords […]1652, Gaule The Magastromancer xix.
    • MACHAROMANCY: Use of swords, daggers, and knives as instruments of divination. Presumably of ancient origin.[1973, Walter B. Gibson, Litzka R. Gibson, The Complete Illustrated Book of Divination and Prophecy, London: Souvenir Press, published 1987, →ISBN, page 320

Forms of macharomancy

alternative formmachæromancy
alternative formmachairomancy

Origin of macharomancy

From Ancient Greek μαχαίρα (makhaíra, “dagger”) + -mancy.

Questions about macharomancy

What does macharomancy mean?
Macharomancy means divination by interpreting swords, daggers and knives. This was popular in Scotland where on July 31st it was performed to predict the deaths and marriages of the following year.
What part of speech is macharomancy?
Macharomancy is a noun.

Words near macharomancy in the dictionary

  1. machang
  2. machanka
  3. machankas
  4. machans
  5. Machaon
  6. macharomancy
  7. Machat
  8. machatschkiite
  9. machbagral
  10. machbagrals
  11. machboos

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: macharomancy (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.

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