phrenology

English

Etymology

From phreno- +‎ -logy.

Pronunciation

  • Rhymes: -ɒlədʒi

Noun

phrenology (countable and uncountable, plural phrenologies)

  1. (medicine, biology, historical) The 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.
    • 1995 November 19, Richard Appel, “Mother Simpson”, in The Simpsons, Harry Shearer (actor):
      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.
    • 2019, Bill Bryson, The Body: A Guide for Occupants, Black Swan (2020), page 86:
      Phrenology was the practice of correlating bumps on a skull with mental powers and attributes of character.
    • 2020 October 5, Paul Turnbull, “Thinking About Craniometry- The Racial Turn”, in Paul Turnbull‎[1]:
      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.

Usage notes

Not to be confused with phenology.

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