What does "phrenology" mean?

The pseudoscience which studies the relationships between a person's character and the morphology (structure) of the skull.

What is a synonym for "phrenology"?

Common synonyms include: craniology, cranioscopy, cranioscopy.

Pronounced //frənˈɑlədʒi//.

//frənˈɑlədʒi// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Noun

1
The pseudoscience which studies the relationships between a person's character and the morphology (structure) of the skull. countable, historical, uncountable
"Phrenology involves feeling the bumps in the skull to determine an individual's psychological attributes."
2
a now abandoned study of the shape of skull as indicative of the strengths of different faculties wordnet

"Phrenology was very popular in the 19th century, but nowadays most consider it to be nothing more than a curious pseudoscience."

From phreno- + -logy.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.