-mancy Also -mantic and -mancer.
Divination.
[Greek manteia, divination.]
Though many words exist in this ending, most are rare; among common ones are geomancy and necromancy. For details, and more commonly encountered ones, Some have corresponding adjectives in -mantic (geomantic, necromantic) and a few have related forms in -manter for a person who practices divination in that way (cartomancer, necromancer).
Some words seem to include this ending through an accident of spelling: adamancy, dormancy, and others contain -cy but not -mancy.
Examples of words in -mancy
Word origins are from Greek.
| aeromancy | prediction by observing weather conditions | aēr, air |
| arithmancy | divination using numbers, especially by counting the number values of letters in names | arithmos, number |
| bibliomancy | telling the future by interpreting a randomly chosen passage from a book, especially the Bible | biblion, book |
| cartomancy | fortune telling by interpreting a random selection of playing cards | French carte, card |
| chiromancy | the prediction of a person's future from the lines on the palms of their hands; palmistry | kheir, hand |
| geomancy | divination from the configuration of a handful of earth or random dots | gē, earth |
| hydromancy | foretelling the future using a reflective object or surface, such as that of water in a bowl; scrying | hudōr, water |
| necromancy | communicating with the dead, especially in order to predict the future; more generally, witchcraft, sorcery, or black magic | nekros, corpse |
| oneiromancy | the interpretation of dreams in order to foretell the future | oneiros, dream |
| pyromancy | divination by fire or by forms appearing in fire | pur, fire |
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