Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun An old mode of divination, consisting in suspending a sieve, or fixing it to the point of a pair of shears, then repeating a formula of words and the names of persons suspected of some crime or other act. If the sieve moved when a name was repeated, the person named was deemed guilty.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Divination by means of a suspended sieve.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun
Divination by the use of a suspendedsieve sometimes from tongs or shears. The movement of the sieve when a person's name or word is spoken is interpreted.
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word coscinomancy.
Examples
-
By coscinomancy, most religiously observed of old amidst the ceremonies of the ancient Romans.
Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002
-
By coscinomancy, most religiously observed of old amidst the ceremonies of the ancient Romans.
Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002
-
As for magic, necromancy, pyromancy, geomancy, coscinomancy, and all the other mancies -- there was then a whole literature about them.
Historical Lectures and Essays Charles Kingsley 1847
-
A mode of divination much in vogue in New England as in Old. Called also “sieve and shears” or “riddle and shears”: the learned name is coscinomancy.
"Letter of Thomas Brattle, F. R. S., 1692"; from Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases, 1648-1706 1692
-
By coscinomancy, most religiously observed of old amidst the ceremonies of the ancient Romans.
Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 3 Fran��ois Rabelais 1518
Comments
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.