augury

au·gu·ry | \ ˈȯ-gyə-rē

, -gə- \

plural auguries

Definition of augury

1 : divination from auspices (see auspice sense 3) or omens Ancient augury involved the interpretation of the flight patterns of birds. also : an instance of this

2 : omen, portent " … the best augury of a man's success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world."— George Eliot

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Examples of augury in a Sentence

a yearbook augury that of all the graduates, he would be the most likely to succeed some people believe that a broken mirror is an augury of seven years' bad luck

Recent Examples on the Web This speculative novel depicts a society in which citizens live and die by the auguries of predictive algorithms developed by a mega-corporation called Beetle. — Evan Osnos, The New Yorker, "Briefly Noted," 6 Jan. 2020 Now science may have found an answer, in the form of molecular augury. — Michele Cohen Marill, Wired, "New Tests Use Epigenetics to Guess How Fast You're Aging," 19 Dec. 2019 That makes the state look like an augury of the political year ahead. — The Economist, "Fahrenheit Wisconsin," 18 Dec. 2019 Ultimately, Mr Dalrymple makes a bolder claim: that the EIC was an augury of today’s Western multinationals and tech giants. — The Economist, "The astonishing and violent rise of the East India Company," 10 Oct. 2019 This is true of Greek myths of augury and oracle — the Sibyl of Cumae and the Delphic Oracle both drew their prophetic knowledge from within the earth, through the limestone. — Tobias Carroll, Longreads, "‘The Underland Is a Deeply Human Realm’: Getting Down with Robert Macfarlane," 20 June 2019 For Petrobras, the explanation is that its share price had already sunk before the car-wash affair began in earnest, reflecting cost overruns that were an augury of the epic mismanagement that the scandal revealed. — The Economist, "Getting a handle on a scandal," 28 Mar. 2018 His use of color was as well known among painters as his mercurial and erratic personality, and scholars, including Wolanin, increasingly see his late work as a major augury of abstraction expressionism. — Stephan Salisbury, Philly.com, "Woodmere acquires vast trove of Arthur Carles' art," 5 June 2018 Partisans from both sides see encouraging auguries. — The Economist, "We think the Democrats are favoured to take the House," 26 May 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'augury.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.