haruspex
/həˈrʌspɛks/noun
haruspex is a noun meaning “A soothsayer or priest in Ancient Rome (originally Etruscan) who practiced haruspicy, divination by inspecting entrails” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled H-A-R-U-S-P-E-X, and it appears about once in every 81 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of haruspex is haruspices.
What does haruspex mean?
noun
- 1
A soothsayer or priest in Ancient Rome (originally Etruscan) who practiced haruspicy, divination by inspecting entrails.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce haruspex?
- /həˈrʌspɛks/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Eleanorrrrrrrrrr-haruspex.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of haruspex
- haruspices plural
- aruspex
- haruspice
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is haruspex?
Haruspex appears about once in every 81 million words in written English, the 286,585th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Haruspex in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense one who practices divination by inspecting entrails:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does haruspex come from?
Borrowed from Latin haruspex.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).