tasseographer means A person who tells fortunes by reading tea leaves or coffee grounds. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 88 out of 100.
Why this word is great
TASSEOGRAPHER — [Noun] A diviner who interprets the dregs of a cup—the clotted patterns in tea leaves or the silted archipelagoes of coffee grounds—to foretell futures. Its etymology is a macaronic blend of French tasse ("cup") and the combining form -grapher ("writer, recorder"), from Greek -graphos. Unlike the clairvoyant, who professes an unmediated vision of the unseen, or the augur, who read the formal flight of birds as civic portent, the tasseographer is a domestic archivist of chaos. Hers is the quiet ritual of the turned cup upon the saucer, the patient scrutiny of a tannin-stained topography, and the whispered linkage of a stray leaf to a ship, a key, or a letter. The practice is a quiet argument that fate, like sediment, settles closest to where we rest our lips.
noun
- A person who tells fortunes by reading tea leaves or coffee grounds.