Word.ws English Dictionary

onychomancy

onychomancy noun: an ancient form of divination based on the symbols that are reflected by sunlight on a person's fingernails.

Noun

onychomancy (uncountable)

  1. An ancient form of divination based on the symbols that are reflected by sunlight on a person's fingernails.
    • I am still not sure what to make of this treatise on onychomancy, that is, divining by observing the fingernails, except that he accounted for the practice as an example of the acute application of observational technique to the signs and symbols left by intelligent nature for humans to decipher in...2016, Brendan Dooley, Angelica's Book and the World of Reading in Late Renaissance Italy
    Synonyms:
    onymancy

Synonyms of onychomancy

  • onymancy

Origin of onychomancy

From onycho- + -mancy.

Words formed from onychomancy

  • onychomancer

Questions about onychomancy

What does onychomancy mean?
Onychomancy means an ancient form of divination based on the symbols that are reflected by sunlight on a person's fingernails.
What part of speech is onychomancy?
Onychomancy is a noun.

Words near onychomancy in the dictionary

  1. onychogryposis
  2. onychology
  3. onycholyses
  4. onycholysis
  5. onychomadesis
  6. onychomancy
  7. onychomycoses
  8. onychomycosis
  9. onychomycotic
  10. onychoosteodysplasia
  11. onychopathic

Source and license

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