Posted by Marc BailesThis introduction augurs for a short word story. If you haven’t already guessed, augur means to foretell, to predict the future. The part of speech can change to a noun, for a sign or an omen of what’s to come. In ancient Rome, the work of an augur involved those very things. An augur would predict the future by trying to interpret events of the day. To such a seer, anything could be seen as an omen. You might be thinking that kind of work is for birds. Well, it’s definitely from the birds. That’s right, an augur would just look to the birds, especially their singing and how and where they’d fly. And that’s likely where the word comes from, at least according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which says augur is a compound form in Latin. Avis, the first half, means “bird."
Image courtesy of United Church of Two Harbors.
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