sortilege.

1. Divination that interprets the outcome of casting or drawing lots.

2. Sorcery or magical practice, especially when presented as occult or malign.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• practice sortilege
• ritual sortilege
• sortilege by casting lots

On the page

The priest used sortilege, reading the scattered tokens as a warning to leave.

Usage notes

Primary category: horror / gothic literary. Lexical Type: Word. Forms: Usually uncountable; no ordinary plural in this sense. Commonness: rare (editorial estimate; not a corpus frequency statistic). Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1; numbered fields keep each relevant meaning separate. Research distinction: Two senses: divination by lots; sorcery. Both explicitly read in positive Merriam-Webster and Collins excerpts. Individual writer usefulness checked for a distinct physical, ritual, facial or acoustic function. Definitions/examples are original; genre suitability is not an inherent emotional rating. Writing functions: precise physical or ritual description, gothic scene construction.