pegomancy

English

Etymology

Ancient Greek πηγή (pēgḗ, “fountain”) +‎ -mancy.

Noun

pegomancy (uncountable)

1. divination by fountains
   • 1824, John Macculloch, The Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland:

     This was the Pegomancy of the Greeks; who also solicited the answer of the Nymphs of the Spring, by offerings of bread, stones, or coins, or by dipping in a mirror, and construing the figures which the water had left on it.

   • 1975, Norman Mailer, letter to William F. Buckley Jr.:

     Needless to say, “midden,” if we are to translate, is the stuff through which one is trying to walk in that footless stocking while the editors of National Review are failing to bite the bullet and forsake all squalid pegomancy for pedomancy.