phrenology

plural phrenologies

1. countablehistoricaluncountablebiologyThe pseudoscience which studies the relationships between a person's character and the morphology (structure) of the skull.

   Phrenology involves feeling the bumps in the skull to determine an individual's psychological attributes.

   3 more examples

   MR. BURNS: Who could forget such a monstrous visage? She has the sloping brow and cranial bumpage of the career criminal. MR. SMITHERS: Uh, sir, phrenology was dismissed as quackery 160 years ago.

   1995 November 19, Richard Appel, “Mother Simpson”, in The Simpsons, Harry Shearer (actor)

   Phrenology was the practice of correlating bumps on a skull with mental powers and attributes of character.

   2019, Bill Bryson, The Body: A Guide for Occupants, Black Swan (2020), page 86

   One significance weakness of phrenology in the eyes of most anatomists, as Anne Harrington has shown, was that the brain comprised two structurally identical cerebral hemispheres, separated by a longitudinal fissure, whereas phrenologists held that the material sub-stratum of various mental faculties was located in only one hemisphere, and not its twin.

   2020 October 5, Paul Turnbull, “Thinking About Craniometry- The Racial Turn”, in Paul Turnbull

   Synonyms: cranioscopy