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Pronounced: (well, really! – as it sounds), noun/verb

Notes: I know some of the definitions; some were unknown to me

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Yesterday’s word

The word mantic means “of or relating to the faculty of divination; prophetic”

First usage

Our word came into English in the late 1500s

Background / Comments

As I noted yesterday, when I saw our word, I thought of “manic” and so a completely wrong idea. Our word came from the Greek word mantikos, which came from mantis (prophet). The insect called “praying mantis” comes from the same source, as people thought it looked like a prophet praying. There is a related suffix “-mancy”, which means divination by <prefix word>. Thus, “tasseomancy” is divination by reading tea leaves – there are many other types of divination that end in “-mancy”.