word of the day: haruspication

word of the day: haruspication

context:

They made love for a long time and finished wet and exhausted. Like swimmers, Browne thought. By the standards of his sexual haruspication, it augured well. He woke briefly, thinking he had heard her in tears. She appeared asleep. He thought it must have been a dream.

definition (Merriam-Webster): an act or instance of foretelling something

Other sources have the foretelling specifically from the examination of animal entrails. 

Ah, the seeking of omens. I wonder what made looking at spilled guts a method of predicting the future. When one “spills one’s guts” these days, it means one is confessing. But then, those are one’s own guts being spilled, not a slaughtered animal’s. I suppose during slaughter the spilling of the animal’s guts can’t be avoided. Presumably the guts fell out in some particularly weird and memorable way one day, then later something else weird and memorable happened, thus the connection. Who knows?

source:

Outerbridge Reach

by Robert Stone

1992. Ticknor & Fields, New York NY