Rhabdomancy
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Divination with wands or rods, especially to use a divining rod to find things below the ground. uncountable
"This question of buried treasure exercised the minds of ancient occultists considerably, and in connection with it there was frequently employed the art of Rhabdomancy, which was similar to that of water divining or water "dousing"."
- 2 searching for underground water or minerals by using a dowsing rod wordnet
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"This question of buried treasure exercised the minds of ancient occultists considerably, and in connection with it there was frequently employed the art of Rhabdomancy, which was similar to that of water divining or water "dousing"."
Etymology
From rhabdo- + -mancy, first attested in 1646. From Latin rhabdomantīa, from Ancient Greek ῥαβδομαντεία (rhabdomanteía), from ῥάβδος (rhábdos, “rod”) + μαντεία (manteía, “divination”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.