extispicy means synonym of haruspicy: the study and divination by use of animal entrails, usually the victims of sacrifice. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.
extispicy is pronounced /ɛkˈstɪspɪsi/.
Why “extispicy” is a great word
EXTISPICY — [Noun] The practice of divining the future or the will of the gods by examining the visceral patterns of a sacrificed animal's entrails. From Latin extispicium, from extispex ("diviner of entrails") + -ium (forming abstract nouns). Unlike haruspicy, which denotes the formal, codified Etruscan and Roman tradition, or hepatomancy, which refers exclusively to liver-reading, extispicy is the general, encompassing term for the sanguine art. It is the slick, warm weight of a liver lifted into lamplight, the intricate branching of purple vessels across a lung’s lobe, and the careful, bloody tracing of a finger along the convoluted surface of intestines—a belief that a god’s intent could be mapped in the warm, reeking topography of a body’s interior, a brutal calculus where the future was parsed not in stars, but in offal.
Etymology
From Latin extispicium, from extispex (“diviner of entrails”) + -ium (forming abstract nouns).
noun
- Synonym of haruspicy: the study and divination by use of animal entrails, usually the victims of sacrifice.“They became experts in what is called extispicy, or the readings of organs of sacrificed animals.”
- A specific instance of such divination.“This image has been interpreted as the performance of “an extispicy on an animal whose flesh the king will later eat."”