| 词汇 | black arts |
| 词源 | black arts. As Weekley points out, this name for conjuring or the art of divination is a mistake, no matter how apt it seems. It was translated into English directly from the Old French nigro- mancie, “divination by means of the dead.” But the Old French word itself had been formed in error from the Greco-Latin nec- romantia meaning the same, people confusing the sound-alike words necro, “dead,” and niger, “black”—and associating black with the dark, secret ways of conjuring. The Greeks and others after them believed that they could divine or foretell the future, or discover hidden knowledge in many ways besides the study of corpses, these methods ranging from the study of animal en- trails to the study of water. |
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