Faith & RitualGreek → English
Necromancy
/ˈnɛkrəmænsi/noun
The practice of summoning the dead to obtain knowledge or work magic.
The Greek roots
νεκρός
nekrós
corpse, dead body
μαντεία
manteía
divination
Literally: “divination by the dead”
The story of the word
It is old enough to be a scene in the Odyssey, where Odysseus digs a trench, fills it with blood and waits for the shades to come up and talk. Medieval Latin misheard the first element as niger, black, and wrote nigromantia, which is where black magic gets its colour and why Middle English says nigromancie. Scholars pulled the spelling back towards the Greek in the sixteenth century, by which time the meaning had spread from consulting corpses to sorcery of any kind.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- c. 1300
Same family
necropolisnecrosismanticobituary
In a sentence
The trial records accuse him of necromancy and of owning the wrong books.
Reviving the old brand felt like necromancy to everyone who had worked there.