-mancy (suffix)

The suffix “-mancy” names a divination technique after the medium it uses. It comes from the Greek manteia, “divination”, itself related to mantis, “seer”. It appears in chiromancy (the hand), cartomancy (cards), oneiromancy (dreams) and crystallomancy (crystal). The suffix has been highly productive: ancient treatises and modern authors have coined hundreds of “-mancy” words, many of them naming rare, learned or purely theoretical practices. The practitioner is sometimes called a “-mancer”, as in necromancer, though English often prefers plainer names such as palm reader or card reader.