hemerology
/hɛməˈɹɑləd͡ʒi/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 0.00 in modern English
19
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
5
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The study of calendars, especially with a view to identifying propitious days.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "Hemerology, (Greek) a Calender, or Book, wherein are regiſtred the paſſages of every day."
- "It is not necessary to an intelligent comprehension of the Gospels, as they have been handed down to us, that they should possess an exact hemerology."
- "For these reasons perhaps unsurprisingly the Babylonian Almanach was the most popular hemerology, enjoying a widespread currency from around the middle of the second millennium BC down well into Late Babylonian times."
- "In our context, the chapter on hemerology (including astrology) is of primary interest. Hemerology, the method for determining favorable and unfavorable days, has a long history in ancient China."
- "The final section of the text […] contains a mock hemerology, in which the dietary prescriptions typical of hemerologies are ridiculed with coarse humor: thus, the dish recommended for the month of Šabāṭu is cedar wood filled with "donkey's buttock, dog's excrement, and bluebotle's excrement." In this case the text clearly parodies hemerologies, one of the most popular genres throughout cuneiform culture."
Etymology
From Ancient Greek ἡμέρᾱ (hēmérā, “day; date”) (a variant of ἦμαρ (êmar, “day”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eh₃- (“be hot, burn”)) + -ology (from Ancient Greek -λογῐ́ᾱ (-logĭ́ā, suffix indicating the study of something, or a branch of knowledge), from λόγος (lógos, “word; explanation; subject matter”) (from λέγω (légō, “to arrange, put in order”), from Proto-Indo-European *leǵ- (“to gather”)) + -ίᾱ (-íā, suffix forming a feminine abstract noun) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *-i-eh₂ (suffix forming a collective noun))).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /hɛməˈɹɑləd͡ʒi/
- British English: /hɛməˈɹɒləd͡ʒi/