Definition of "palmistry"
palmistry
noun
usually uncountable, plural palmistries
Telling fortunes from the lines on the palms of the hand.
Quotations
And those fayre hands within whose louely palmes,Fortune diuineth happie Augurie,Those straightest fingers dealing heauenly almes,Pointed with pur’st of Natures Alcumie,Where loue sits looking in loues palmistrie.
1593, Michael Drayton, Idea the Shepheards Garland, London: Thomas Woodcocke, Eglog 5, page 32
[…] but his [God’s] right hand of truth and bountie, does by a Catholike and vnfeigned Palmistrie, shew the blessings prouided for other men!
1626, Barten Holyday, “A Sermon preached at Christ-church in Oxford on Ascension-day”, in Three Sermons vpon the Passion, Resurrection and Ascension of Our Sauior, London: Nathaniell Butter, page 94
If you had cared to do so, you could have told the little chap’s fortune from those hands. They were not flat and featureless as you might have expected them to be; already they had all the lines and creases known to palmistry.
1941, H. G. Wells, You Can’t Be Too Careful, London: Secker & Warburg, Book 1, Chapter 1
(countable) A book on palmistry; a system of palmistry.
Quotations
Both the composition and the transmission of this palmistry must be taken in the context of the medieval Christian world, in which the life on earth was still secondary to the life in the hereafter; even so, texts such as these palmistries do make the unreadable mysteries of one’s relationship to the world seem more familiar and more accessible.
1991 May, Eriko Amino, “A Medieval Palmistry”, in Columbia Library Columns, volume 40, number 1, page 31
To fulfill my graduate language requirement I began reading Michel Foucault’s work on signatures, Les Mots et Les Choses, which joined the meanings of the bestiaries, herbals, palmistries, and physiognomies of olden Europe to the totemic orders of plants and animals among the Arapaho, Xhosa, and Aranda.
1996, Richard Grossinger, New Moon, Berkeley, CA: Frog, Part 7, Chapter 2, p. 534
(obsolete, rare) A dexterous use or trick of the hand.
Quotations
In the Height of his Good-humour, meeting a common Beggar upon the Road who was no Conjuror, as he went to relieve him he found his Pocket was pick’d: That being a Kind of Palmistry at which this Race of Vermin are very dextrous.
1711, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, The Spectator, Volume 2, No. 130, 30 July, 1711, London: J. and R. Tonson, 12th edition, 1739, p. 182