Sunday Word: Augury
augury [aw-gyuh-ree]
noun:
1 the art or practice of an augur; divination
2 the rite or ceremony of an augur
3 an omen, token, or indication
Examples:
"First sale of the day," said Guna brightly; in India, a day's first sale is often taken as a bright augury. (Guy Trebay, Finding Peace (and Quiet) in India's Tamil Nadu, Condé Nast Traveler, February 2016)
An unexpected blast of solar radiation damages the ship, stirs the crew from their hypersleep, and results in the death of the Covenant’s erstwhile captain inside his malfunctioning sleep pod, an unheeded augury of things to come. (Sam Adams, Alien: Covenant, Slate, May 2017)
An old tractor sputters in a wretched field, and vomits out one thick spurt of coal-black soot. That pollution is an augury of the impenetrable darkness that swallows what's left of the Graham family in the What Josiah Saw. (Richard Whittaker, Fantasia Review: What Josiah Saw, The Austen Chronicle, August 2021)
But these truly woful and deplorable calamities the gods gave him no previous hint of, neither by entrails, augury, dream, nor prediction. (Aurelius Augustine, The Works of Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo)
With these words he approached the cavern, and perceived that it was impossible to let himself down or effect an entrance except by sheer force or cleaving a passage; so drawing his sword he began to demolish and cut away the brambles at the mouth of the cave, at the noise of which a vast multitude of crows and choughs flew out of it so thick and so fast that they knocked Don Quixote down; and if he had been as much of a believer in augury as he was a Catholic Christian he would have taken it as a bad omen and declined to bury himself in such a place. (Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote)
(click to enlarge)
Origin:
late 14c, 'divination from the flight of birds,' from Old French augure, augurie 'divination, soothsaying, sorcery, enchantment,' or directly from Latin augurium 'divination, the observation and interpretation of omens'. The sense of 'omen, portent, indication, that which forebodes' is from 1610s. (Online Etymology Dictionary)