geomaunt

plural geomaunts

1. geomant

   2 more examples

   A remote sky, prolonged to the sea's brim: One rock-point standing buffeted alone, Vexed at its base with a foul beast unknown, Hell-birth of geomaunt and teraphim: A knight, and a winged creature bearing him, Reared at the rock: a woman fettered there, Leaning into the hollow with loose hair And throat let back and heartsick trail of limb. The sky is harsh, and the sea shrewd and salt. 10 Under his lord the griffin-horse ramps blind With rigid wings and tail. The spear's lithe stem Thrills in the roaring of those jaws: behind, That evil length of body chafes at fault. She does not hear nor see—she knows of them.

   1849 October 18, wikipedia:Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Letter to William Michael Rossetti

   Geomaunt and teraphim make a bizarre pair. The O.E.D. gives Rossetti’s sonnet as reference for ‘geomant’ or ‘geomaunt,’ one skilled in ‘geomancy,’ the art of divining the future by observing terrestrial shapes or the ciphers drawn when handfuls of earth are scattered (geomancy occurs in Buchner’s Woyzeck when the tor-mented Woyzeck sees a hideous future writ in the shapes of moss and fungi). Rossetti’s source for this occult term may well have been its appearance in Dante [...].

   1975, wikipedia:George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation