Cranioscopy
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The study of the shape, size, and other features of the human skull. countable, rare, uncountable
"In the first part of my Atlas on Cranioscopy, which appeared in Leipzig in 1843, I remarked that in the skull of a Greenlander, which I sketched, it was singular, that on this skull there was a decided separation between the upper jaw-bone and the intermaxillary bone, almost as in little children or in quadrupeds."
- 2 Phrenology. countable, dated, historical, uncountable
"A theory that was totally wrong helped focus attention on the right questions. Some people called it phrenology. Its founder, Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) called it cranioscopy. . . . It held that the brain had specific areas of function and that mental and moral attributes of a person could be determined by examination of the cranium."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"In the first part of my Atlas on Cranioscopy, which appeared in Leipzig in 1843, I remarked that in the skull of a Greenlander, which I sketched, it was singular, that on this skull there was a decided separation between the upper jaw-bone and the intermaxillary bone, almost as in little children or in quadrupeds."
Etymology
From cranio- + -scopy.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.