palmistry

Telling fortunes from the lines on the palms of the hand.

Chiromantie is a coniecturyng by beholdyng the lynes, or wryncles of the handes called commonly Palmistry.

And those fayre hands within whose louely palmes, Fortune diuineth happie Augurie, Those straightest fingers dealing heauenly almes, Pointed with pur’st of Natures Alcumie, Where loue sits looking in loues palmistrie.

A book on palmistry; a system of palmistry.

No living palmistries can spell The bird-runes on the stretched silk of her hand

Both the composition and the transmission of this palmistry must be taken in the context of the medieval Christian world, in which the life on earth was still secondary to the life in the hereafter; even so, texts such as these palmistries do make the unreadable mysteries of one’s relationship to the world seem more familiar and more accessible.

A dexterous use or trick of the hand.

1711, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, The Spectator, Volume 2, No. 130, 30 July, 1711, London: J. and R. Tonson, 12th edition, 1739, p. 182, In the Height of his Good-humour, meeting a common Beggar upon the Road who was no Conjuror, as he went to relieve him he found his Pocket was pick’d: That being a Kind of Palmistry at which this Race of Vermin are very dextrous.