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Augury was a Greco-Roman religious practice of observing the behavior of birds, to receive omens. When the individual, known as the augur, read these signs, it was referred to as "taking the auspices". "Auspices" (Latin: auspicium) means "looking at birds". Auspex, another word for augur, can be translated to "one who looks at birds". [1]
Also apophthegm. A terse, pithy saying, akin to a proverb, maxim, or aphorism. aposiopesis A rhetorical device in which speech is broken off abruptly and the sentence is left unfinished. apostrophe A figure of speech in which a speaker breaks off from addressing the audience (e.g., in a play) and directs speech to a third party such as an opposing litigant or some other individual, sometimes ...
Ornithomancy (modern term from Greek ornis "bird" and manteia "divination"; in Ancient Greek: οἰωνίζομαι "take omens from the flight and cries of birds") is the practice of reading omens from the actions of birds followed in many ancient cultures including the Greeks, and is equivalent to the augury employed by the ancient Romans.
The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Penguin Books, 2000. ISBN 0-14-051363-9. Dana Gioia. The Longman Dictionary of Literary Terms: Vocabulary for the Informed Reader. Longman, 2005. ISBN 0-321-33194-X. Sharon Hamilton. Essential Literary Terms: A Brief Norton Guide with Exercises. W. W. Norton, 2006. ISBN 0-393-92837-3.
The effectiveness of augury could only be judged retrospectively; the divinely ordained condition of peace (pax deorum) was an outcome of successful augury. Those whose actions had led to divine wrath ( ira deorum ) could not have possessed a true right of augury ( ius augurum ). [ 9 ]
Greek divination is the divination practiced by ancient Greek culture as it is known from ancient Greek literature, supplemented by epigraphic and pictorial evidence.. Divination is a traditional set of methods of consulting divinity to obtain prophecies (theopropia) about specific circumstances defined be
Wyrd is a noun formed from the Old English verb weorþan, meaning 'to come to pass, to become'. [7] Adjectival use of wyrd developed in the 15th century, in the sense 'having the power to control destiny', originally in the name of the Weird Sisters , i.e. the classical Fates , who in the Elizabethan period were detached from their classical ...
Starting in the 14th century, a gloze in the English language was a marginal note or explanation, borrowed from French glose, which comes from medieval Latin glōsa, classical glōssa, meaning an obsolete or foreign word that needs explanation. [1] Later, it came to mean the explanation itself.