Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The art or practice of using the manual alphabet—that is, of communicating thoughts by signs made with the hands and fingers, as by deaf persons. Also
chirologia .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The art or practice of using the manual alphabet or of communicating thoughts by sings made by the hands and fingers; a substitute for spoken or written language in intercourse with the deaf. See
dactylalogy .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun
Palm reading . - noun The use of the
manual alphabet ;signing .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun telling fortunes by lines on the palm of the hand
Etymologies
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Examples
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Someone should investigate, using the tools of chirology.
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In France and later in England, with help from the Quakers and various prominent individuals, she began researching and writing books on chirology.
Charlotte Wolff. 2009
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Around the same time, she became interested in sexology, psychotherapy, and chirology or hand reading.
Charlotte Wolff. 2009
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Now with this man alone, sufficient for supplying all their places, will that great inconveniency hereafter be totally removed; seeing he is such a fine gesticulator, and in the practice of chirology an artist so complete, expert, and dexterous, that with his very fingers he doth speak.
Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002
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Now with this man alone, sufficient for supplying all their places, will that great inconveniency hereafter be totally removed; seeing he is such a fine gesticulator, and in the practice of chirology an artist so complete, expert, and dexterous, that with his very fingers he doth speak.
Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002
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Now with this man alone, sufficient for supplying all their places, will that great inconveniency hereafter be totally removed; seeing he is such a fine gesticulator, and in the practice of chirology an artist so complete, expert, and dexterous, that with his very fingers he doth speak.
Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 3 Fran��ois Rabelais 1518
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In the midst of this observation period, I chanced upon a curious seventeenth-century book on the subject of “chirology”—that is, the discourse or language of the “chiros,” or hand—while searching for another early modern book in a digital archive.
Talk with the Hand! 2021
Gammerstang commented on the word chirology
(noun) - The art of conversing with the hands and fingers.
--Joseph Worcester's Dictionary of the English Language, 1881
January 16, 2018