od

Borrowed from German Od, arbitrarily coined by the German scientist and philosopher Carl Reichenbach (1788–1869).

nb...

􂀿...􂁀 The Complete Work, from the German Second Edition. With the Addition of a Preface and Critical Notes, by John Ashburner, M.D.

219, Regent Street. Paris: J.-B. Baillière, rue Hautefeuille. New York: H. Baillière.

(pseudoscience, historical, also attributive) A hypothetical force or natural power, which was supposed by Carl Reichenbach and others to inhere in certain people and produce phenomena such as animal magnetism and mesmerism, and to be developed by various agencies, as by chemical or vital action, heat, light, magnets, etc.


phrenology

en-noun

phrenology (countable and uncountable, plural phrenologies)

Phrenology involves feeling the bumps in the skull to determine an individual's psychological attributes.

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.

1995 November 19, Richard Appel, “Mother Simpson”, in The Simpsons, Harry Shearer (actor):

Phrenology was the practice of correlating bumps on a skull with mental powers and attributes of character.

2019, Bill Bryson, The Body: A Guide for Occupants, Black Swan (2020), page 86:

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.

2020 October 5, Paul Turnbull, “Thinking About Craniometry- The Racial Turn”, in Paul Turnbull:

(medicine, biology, historical) The pseudoscience which studies the relationships between a person's character and the morphology (structure) of the skull.

frenologie

the science or discredited pseudo-science of phrenology


physiognomy

physiognomy (countable and uncountable, plural physiognomies)

physiognomies (plural)
fisnomie (alternative obsolete)
fisnomy (alternative obsolete)
phisnomy (alternative obsolete)
physnomie (alternative obsolete)
physnomy (alternative obsolete)
visnomie (alternative obsolete)
visnomy (alternative obsolete)

Inherited from Middle English phisonomie, from Anglo-Norman phisenomie, Middle French phisonomie et al., ultimately from Late Latin physiognomia, from Ancient Greek φυσιογνωμία (phusiognōmía, “physiology”), from φύσις (phúsis, “physique, appearance”) + γνώμη (gnṓmē, “means of knowing”). Middle English phisonomie would regularly develop into *physnomy /ˈfɪznəmi/ (forms of this type are common in Early Modern English, such as fisnomie in All's Well that Ends Well); the modern spelling and pronunciation are due to learned influence.

der

Known still less than Della Porta is the figure of Camillo Baldi, an early-seventeenth-century Bolognese physician and university professor who advanced the discussion from the study of physiognomy and skull sizes to the study of characteriology based on writing. I am still not sure what to make of this treatise on onychomancy, that is, divining by observing the fingernails, except that he accounted for the practice as an example of the acute application of observational technique to the signs and symbols left by intelligent nature for humans to decipher in view of some benefit.

2016, Brendan Dooley, Angelica's Book and the World of Reading in Late Renaissance Italy:

During a period of peak popularity in the 19ᵗʰ Century, the field of physiognomy became more sinister and racist than its quirky manifestation during the time of ancient Greeks.

2022 May 20, Trenton W. Ford, “Is your face gay? Conservative? Criminal? AI researchers are asking the wrong questions”, in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

The art or pseudoscience of deducing the predominant temper and other characteristic qualities of the mind from the outward appearance, especially from the features of the face.

fisionomie

art or pseudoscience of deducing the character or personality from the bodily appearance


dowse

en-verb

dowse (third-person singular simple present dowses, present participle dowsing, simple past and past participle dowsed)

dowses (present singular third-person)
dowsing (participle present)
dowsed (participle past)
dowsed (past)

Alternative form of douse (“to plunge into water”).


dowse

Alternative form of douse (“to strike”).


dowse

Unknown; originally a dialectal term from southern England.

(intransitive) To use the dipping or divining rod, as in search of water, ore, etc.


essiac

From the surname of the inventor, Rene Caisse, spelled backwards.

A herbal infusion claimed by some to be able to cure cancer.


ki

From dated romanizations of Mandarin 氣 /气 (qì) without the k-q merger, or from Japanese 気 (ki), both ultimately from the same Middle Chinese origin.

If you are calm and relaxed it will be easier for you to accept and use his ki, helping him to reach his goal. In other words, you will redirect his ki or enhance it with your own to bring your attacker down in the direction he was directing his ki.

1983, George A. Kirby, Jujitsu: Basic Techniques of the Gentle Art, page 19:


reiki

en-noun

reiki (countable and uncountable, plural reikis)

1970s, from Japanese 霊気 (reiki, literally “spiritual chi/ki”).

bor

Demonstrated by experienced professionals, the fair will provide the opportunity to learn about unique healing methods such as Chakra Healing, Sound Therapy, Reiki, Kinesiology and Crystal Healing.

2023 December 21, The Central Coast Community News, NSW, page 16, column 2:

A Japanese form of pseudomedicine that involves transferring chi through one's palms.


c-decay

From c (“the symbol used in physics for the speed of light”) + decay.

com

(creationism, pseudoscience) The discredited theory that the speed of light has decreased over time, proposed by creationists in order to support the belief that the universe is a few thousand years old even though there are objects visible today that are billions of light years away (whereas a constant speed of light would indicate that the universe is billions of years old and so contradict this belief).


aura

en-noun

aura (countable and uncountable, plural aurae or auræ or auras)

aurae (plural)
auræ (plural)
auras (plural)

Borrowed from Latin aura (“a breeze, a breath of air, the air”), from Ancient Greek αὔρα (aúra, “breeze, soft wind”), from ἀήρ (aḗr, “air”). Doublet of east, auster, air, and aria. The slang sense originated in the early 2020s and was popularized on TikTok around May 2024.

der

(also parapsychology) A supposed emanation from and surrounding a living person or thing, regarded by mystics as consisting of the essence of the individual.

аура

an invisible force surrounding a living creature


meridian

The noun is derived from Late Middle English meridian, meridien (“midday, noon; position of the sun at noon; the south; longitude of a place; (astronomy) celestial meridian”) [and other forms], from Anglo-Norman meridien (“midday”), Middle French meridien (“midday; the south; terrestrial meridian; (astronomy) celestial meridian”) (modern French méridien), and Old French meridiane, meridiiene, and from their etymon Latin merīdiānum (“midday; position of the sun at noon; the south”), a noun use of the neuter form of merīdiānus (“relating to midday; southern”); see further at etymology 1.
Sense 1.1 (“celestial meridian”) is ultimately modelled after Latin merīdiāna līnea (“meridian line”). Sense 5.2 (“midday rest; siesta”) is modelled after Late Latin meridiana (“midday; midday rest”), probably short for Latin merīdiāna hōra (“midday time”).
The verb is derived from the noun.

nb...

meridene, meridiane, meridien, meridyan, meridyen, merydien, merydyen,

cog

In this Place of Venus the Hour and Amplitude of the Sun's Riſing, for one Half of the Year, are the ſame with thoſe of his Setting in the other Half; which will alſo happen in all Places under the firſt Meridian, where he riſes and ſets: […]

1746 March 31 (Gregorian calendar), James Ferguson, “VI. The Phænomena of Venus, Represented in an Orrery Made by James Ferguson, Agreeable to the Observations of Seignior Bianchini.”, in Philosophical Transactions. Giving Some Account of the Present Undertakings, Studies, and Labours, of the Ingenious, in Many Considerable Parts of the World, volume XLIV, number 479, London: […] T. Woodward, […] ; and C. Davis […] printers to the Royal Society, →DOI, →OCLC, paragraph 15, page 140:

Thought he, it’s a wicked world in all meridians; I’ll die a pagan.

1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Biographical”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 62:

(also geography) In full terrestrial meridian: a great circle on the Earth's surface, passing through the geographic poles (the terrestrial North Pole and South Pole); also, half of such a circle extending from pole to pole, all points of which have the same longitude.

خَطّ الطُّول

great circle on the Earth’s surface, passing through the geographic poles


cootie

Probably from Malay kutu (“flea, louse”) (and/or Tagalog/Maori). First attested in English in 1917 as British army slang during World War I.

(rare) A nest-building female American coot (counterpart to cooter).


baramin

From Biblical Hebrew בָּרָא (bārāˀ, “he created”) + מיִן (mīʸn, “kind”) (misunderstood to mean "created kind"), coined by American creationist Frank Lewis Marsh in 1941.

coin

(creationism) A set of organisms descended from some originally created species (based on the Biblical doctrine of Special Creation); a kind.


baraminology

From baramin + -ology, coined by American creationist Kurt Wise in 1990.

The classification of organisms based on the Biblical doctrine of Special Creation, done mainly by Creationists; the study of the created kinds.


dowsing

en-noun

dowsing (countable and uncountable, plural dowsings)

The practice of seeking water or other substances (usually liquid) with the aid of a forked stick or similar pointing device, as believed by some practitioners to derive from supernatural power.


CSICOP

Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
w:Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. Former name of Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.


physiognomist

We shall never be able to claim any credit as a physiognomist again, for, after a careful scrutiny of this gentleman's countenance, we had come to the conclusion that it bespoke nothing but conceit and silliness, when our friend with the silver staff whispered in our ear that he was no other than a doctor of civil law.

1836, “Boz” [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], Sketches by “Boz,” Illustrative of Every-day Life, and Every-day People. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: John Macrone, […], →OCLC, chapter 8:

One who studies, or is an expert in, physiognomy; one who studies the outer appearance of the person (primarily the face) to acquire knowledge of the inner personality.


quackery

quackery (countable and uncountable, plural quackeries)

When no certain cure exists, quack remedies tend to proliferate and the history of quackery and secret cures is full of extraordinary forms of treatment for the various arthritic disorders.

1976 March 27, F. Dudley Hart, “History of the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis”, in British Medical Journal, volume 1, number 6012, →DOI, →JSTOR, page 763:

(law, medicine, uncountable) The practice of fraudulent medicine, usually in order to make money or for ego gratification and power; health fraud.


homeopathy

homeopathy (countable and uncountable, plural homeopathies)

homeopathies (plural)
homoeopathy (alternative)
homœopathy (alternative)

/ˌhəʊmɪˈɒpəθi/

/ˌhɒmɪˈɒpəθi/

From German Homöopathie, equivalent to English homeo- + -pathy.

I am sure that if doctors (for instance) were first taught how to use some of the other methods of homeopathy effectively, particularly the therapeutics and organ-based methods, they would be much more able to incorporate these into their practices […]

2004, Ian Watson, A Guide to the Methodologies of Homeopathy, Cutting Edge Publications, →ISBN, page 20:

A system of treating diseases with small amounts of substances which, in larger amounts, would produce the observed symptoms.

مُعَالَجَة مَثَلِيَّة

system of treating diseases with very small amounts


energy field

The state of your energy field indicates that you are emotionally troubled.

alternative medicine
alternative medicine

(alternative medicine) The spiritual or etheric energy produced by an individual living being.


New Age

en-adj

New Age (comparative more New Age, superlative most New Age)

more New Age (comparative)
most New Age (superlative)
new age (alternative)
new-age (alternative)

Of or relating to a broad movement in Western culture, covering a wide variety of alternative spiritual and philosophical ideas, often spirituality, mysticism, holism, and environmentalism, and partially based on eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism, that developed towards the end of the 20th century.

(music) Of or relating to New Age music.


New Age

new age (alternative)
new-age (alternative)

At this point in history, the most radical, pervasive, and earth-shaking transformation would occur simply if everybody truly evolved to a mature, rational, and responsible ego, capable of freely participating in the open exchange of mutual self-esteem. There is the "edge of history." There would be a real New Age.

1995, Ken Wilber, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality:

A modern spiritual and religious movement.

العَصْر الجَدِيد

a modern spiritual and religious movement


feng shui

Feng Shui (alternative)
fengshui (alternative)
feng-shui (alternative)

Borrowed from Mandarin 風水 /风水 (fēngshuǐ, “feng shui (Chinese system of geomancy)”, literally “wind and water”): 風 /风 (fēng, “wind”) + 水 (shuǐ, “water”). Doublet of fung shui.

bor

On my telling two missionaries here lately that this Government would not allow a road to be made to their coal mines because it would obstruct the Feng-shui, they only laughed at it. [...] The upper classes may have Feng-shui, and use it when it suits them, as the Government do; but they also, when it suits their purpose, have no difficulty in overcoming the Feng Shui.

1869 March 15, “Summary of news from the Far East. China. Tientsin.”, in The London and China Telegraph, Japan Herald, and Journal of the Eastern Archipelago, French mail edition, volume XI, number 315, London: Printed for the proprietors by Richard Kindee, […], and published by James West […], published 7 June 1869, →OCLC, page 258, column 2:

When the Hongkong Government cut a road, now known as the Gap, to the Happy Valley, the Chinese community was thrown into a state of abject terror and fright, on account of the disturbance which this amputation of the dragon's limbs would cause to the Feng-shui of Hongkong; and when many of the engineers, employed at the cutting, died of the Hongkong fever, and the foreign houses already built in the Happy Valley had to be deserted on account of malaria, the Chinese triumphantly declared, it was an act of retributory justice on the part of Feng-shui.

1873, Ernest J. Eitel [i.e., Ernst Johann Eitel], “Introductory”, in Feng-shui: Or, The Rudiments of Natural Science in China, London: Trübner & Co., →OCLC, page 2:

Feng-Shui views heaven and earth, the whole universe, as one great fetich, animated by a blind unintelligent but omnipotent vitality, a vitality in which man shares, and of which, by the exercise of his intelligent faculties, he may procure a larger and better share than would otherwise fall to his lot. As a practical art, Feng-Shui is the terrestrial sister of Astrology, a mode of deciphering the destinies of an individual as included in the vast complications of the universal whole, but in this respect the earthly sister excels her star-gazing prototype, that by means of Feng-Shui a man learns not only what his fate is, but how it may be modified to his own advantage.

1874 March, F. S. T., “Feng-Shui”, in The Cornhill Magazine, volume XXIX, number 171, London: Smith, Elder & Co., […], →OCLC, page 343:

The following are translated copies of placards which have been extensively posted in the city and suburbs during the past week: [...] "[...] On recovering our Feng Shui land, then the state will be prosperous, the people peaceable, the winds moderate, and the rains favorable. Let all the people exert themselves."

1878 September 15, “Mr. [M. M.] De Lano to Mr. Holcombe. [Inclosure 3 in No. 61; No. 111; The Wu Shih Shan Riot. Placards.]”, in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress, with the Annual Message of the President, December 1, 1879. […], Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, published 1879, →OCLC, page 187:

The question of the Channel Tunnel has been discussed from many points of view, commercial, naval, military; and all that can be said on the subject from a scientific or statistical standpoint has probably been exhausted. But the final clinching argument is that the tunnel would destroy our insular position; and it is there that the Press carries public opinion with it. We cannot have our insular position destroyed. The sea is England's glory and the wind and the waves her portion and her heritage, and shall these advantages be abated for the sake of a hole under the sea and a devil carriage to roar through it? Never, says John Bull; and doubtless his instinct is right. But if that isn't belief in feng-shui, which means precisely wind and water, one humble scribe would like to know what is.

1913 December 20, “The Memories of the Unattainable”, in The North-China Herald and Supreme Court & Consular Gazette: The Weekly Edition of the North-China Daily News, volume CIX (New Series), number 2419, Shanghai: Printed and published at the offices of the North-China Daily News & Herald, Ld., →OCLC, pages 904–905:

An example of public acknowledgement by Government of the legitimacy of feng-shui disputes in the Tsuen Wan area [in Hong Kong] concerned the objections of villagers in Sheung Kwai Chung to the construction of a salt water service reservoir. It was claimed that the construction of this reservoir on a ridge behind the village would adversely affect the village's feng-shui because the veins of the "green dragon" protecting the village would be severed.

1968 July, Baruch Boxer, “Space, Change and Feng-shui in Tsuen Wan’s Urbanization”, in K. Ishwaran, editor, Journal of Asian and African Studies, volume 3, numbers 3–4, Leiden: E[vert] J[an] Brill, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, pages 231–232:

(Chinese mythology) A system of spiritual energies, both good and evil, present in the natural features of landscapes.

風水 /风水

system of spiritual energies present in the natural features of landscapes


iridology

(alternative medicine) A form of alternative medicine involving the diagnosis of body ailments through the examination of the iris of the human eye.


aromatherapy

en-noun

aromatherapy (countable and uncountable, plural aromatherapies)

/əˌrəʊməˈθɛrəpi/

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-aromatherapy.wav

(alternative medicine) The use of selected fragrances in lotions and inhalants in an effort to affect mood and promote health.


false memory syndrome

(pseudoscience) A condition in which a person's identity and relationships are affected by memories which are factually incorrect but strongly believed.


naturopathy

naturopathy (countable and uncountable, plural naturopathies)

(alternative medicine) A system of therapy that avoids synthetic drugs and surgery, while emphasizing the use of natural remedies (plants and the elements) and physical means (massage, acupuncture) to treat illness.


reflexology

reflexology (usually uncountable, plural reflexologies)

From reflex + -ology, derived from Russian.

(medicine) The study and interpretation of behavior in terms of simple and complex reflexes.


graphology

graphology (usually uncountable, plural graphologies)

/ɡɹæˈfɒ.lə.d͡ʒi/

/ɡɹæˈfɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/

From French graphologie, coined by Jean-Hippolyte Michon from Ancient Greek γραφή (graphḗ, “writing”) + French -logie (“study of”). By surface analysis, grapho- + -logy.

Graphology, or handwriting analysis, is the study and interpretation of handwriting as an indicator of personality. Professional graphologists offer four primary services: graphology classes to hobbyists, personality profiles to help individuals increase their self-knowledge and potential for change, personnel screening and consultation for employers, and questioned document examination, or forensic graphology, to identify forged handwriting and documents for legal purposes.

1999, Lee Naftali, Joel Naftali, You're Certifiable: The Alternative Career Guide to More Than 700 Certificate Programs, Trade Schools, and Job Opportunities, page 155:

The philosopher Ludwig Klages saw graphology as a means to penetrate the deceptive self-presentation of his contemporaries and unveil their true character.

2003, Michael Hau, The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany: A Social History, 1890-1930, page 50:

Graphology and graphological deviation are likely to be very significant in a mode that lacks non-textual social cues, such as paralanguage, prosody and gesture.

2006, Bethan Benwell, Elizabeth Stokoe, Discourse and Identity, page 263:

(uncountable) The study of handwriting, especially as a means of analyzing a person's character.


astrometeorology

(astrology) The practice of using astrology for weather forecasting.


new age

New Age (alternative)
new-age (alternative)


numerology

numerology (countable and uncountable, plural numerologies)

/ˌnjuːməˈɹɒləd͡ʒi/

/ˌnuməˈɹɑləd͡ʒi/

The study of the purported mystical relationship between numbers (or the letters of words, represented by numbers) and the character or action of physical objects and living beings.


biodynamic

en-adj

biodynamic (comparative more biodynamic, superlative most biodynamic)

more biodynamic (comparative)
most biodynamic (superlative)

biologisch-dynamisch

Relating to agriculture according to anthroposophic precepts

This ancient mode of thought exists to this day in the mystical biodynamic gardening practices of Rudolph Steiner, which call for planting only when the moon is in a favorable position for the variety of plant chosen.

1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 215:

(anthroposophy, agriculture, pseudoscience) Of, or relating to a form of organic agriculture with mystical and holistic elements, based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner.

(New Age, psychoanalysis, pseudoscience) Of, or relating to a form of psychotherapy, massage and energy healing developed by Gerda Boyesen in Norway in the 1950s.


cerealogy

There is no university with a department of cerealogy, and consequently anyone may call him- or herself a "cerealogist," even after one single visit to a crop circle.

2001, Eltjo Haselhoff, The Deepening Complexity of Crop Circles: Scientific Research & Urban Legends, page xv:

Despite film showing the two men creating highly complex crop circles, the momentum behind cerealogy was too strong to be stopped by any admission of English eccentricity.

2002 August 12, “Cereal offenders who won't go away”, in Christian Science Monitor:

Patrick Moore, in Can You Speak Venusian, noted that — shades of cerealogy — the crops over a wide area had been flattened.

2005, Steve Dewey, John Ries, In Alien Heat: The Warminster Mystery Revisited, page 57:


intelligent design

Became a standard and widely promoted term in the 1987 draft of Of Pandas and People by Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon, as a repackaging of creationism after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against its teaching in Edwards v. Aguillard (1987).

Anaxagoras (500–428 B.C.) was the first of the Greeks "to attribute the adaptations of Nature to Intelligent Design, and was thus the founder of Teleology," an idea that has played a retarding function in the history of evolution.

1926, Horatio Hackett Newman, chapter 2, in Evolution, Genetics And Eugenics, page 13:

Of Pandas and People is not intended to be a balanced treatment by itself. We have given a favorable case for intelligent design and raised reasonable doubt about natural descent. But used together with your other text, it should help to balance the overall curriculum.

1993, Percival Davis, Dean H. Kenyon, “Introduction”, in Charles Thaxton, editor, Of Pandas and People, 2nd edition, Dallas, TX: Haughton Pub. Co., →ISBN, page ix:

Intelligent design means that the various forms of life began abruptly through the agency of an intelligent creator with their distinctive features already intact—fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc.

2006, Philip Clayton, Zachary R. Simpson, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science, Oxford University Press,, →ISBN, page 735:

The belief that biological life on Earth, or more broadly, the universe as a whole, was created by an intelligent agent (specified or unspecified) rather than being the result of undirected natural processes.

Dean H. Kenyon
Edwards v. Aguillard
Of Pandas and People
Percival Davis
intelligent design


social Darwinism

Night City was like a deranged experiment in social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button.

1984, William Gibson, Neuromancer (Sprawl; book 1), New York, N.Y.: Ace Books, →ISBN, page 7:

(sciences) The theory that the laws of evolution by natural selection also apply to social structures.


ley line

From ley (“meadow”) + line. Coined by archaeologist Alfred Watkins, who believed that the toponyms ley, lea and leigh indicated Neolithic paths.

Glastonbury had long been associated with myths of ancient kings, witchcraft, ley-lines and wart curing[.]

1982, Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything, page 99:

(chiefly Forteana) A supposed alignment of ancient sacred sites, such as megalith structures, along straight lines of mystical power.


neuro-linguistic programming

(pseudoscience, psychology) A field of study that attempts to build a set of transferable skills by programming the unconscious mind.


Lysenkoism

The use of pseudoscience in furtherance of an ideology.


cereologist

Someone who studies crop circles, especially one who believes that they are not man-made or formed by other terrestrial processes.


irreducible complexity

Coined by Michael Behe in his 1996 book Darwin's Black Box.

(biology, pseudoscience) The proposition that complex organs such as eyes and flagella must have started existing in their current form; i.e., that they cannot have evolved from previous, less complex stages.

Darwin's Black Box
Michael Behe
irreducible complexity


horoscope

Borrowed from Middle French horoscope, from Medieval Latin horoscopus, from Ancient Greek ὡροσκόπος (hōroskópos), from ὥρα (hṓra, “any limited time”) + σκοπός (skopós, “watcher”).

com

The position of the planets and stars at the moment of someone's birth; a diagram of such positions.

天宮圖 /天宫图

position of the planets and stars; diagram of such positions

We must talk of the force of circumstances, of imperative necessity, and find fault with the cruel horoscope which ordained such a fate.

1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter VIII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 90:

"Ah, min hart! And what day was it?"
"How curious you are! Do you want to cast my horoscope?"

1855, William Hurton, chapter XXIII, in The Doomed Ship; or, The Wreck of the Arctic Regions, London: Willoughby & Co., […], →OCLC, page 103:

An astrological forecast of a person's future based on such information.


theriac

en-noun

theriac (countable and uncountable, plural theriacs)

theriacs (plural)
theriaca (alternative)
theriace (alternative)
theriack (alternative)
theriaque (alternative)

From Medieval Latin theriacum, from Ancient Greek θηριακὸν (thēriakòn) and Late Latin theriaca, from Ancient Greek θηριακὴ (thēriakḕ, “of or related to poisonous reptiles”), from θηρίον (thēríon, “little beast”) + -κός (-kós), from θήρ (thḗr, “beast”) + -ίον (-íon, diminutive suffix). Doublet of theriaca.

der

...ane half vnce of guid auld theriac...

1568, Gilbert Skeyne, Ane Breue Descriptioun of the Pest, Ch. 7

...the great number of Vipers, brought to the Grand Duke of Toscany for the composing of Theriac or Treacle...

1666, Philosophical Transactions, volume I, page 160:

...in the herbal (Kra:uterbuch) of German physician Adam Lonicer... In his final edition, published in 1587 (the year after his death), Lonicer added an entry on bezoar, "a stone against all poison," which he highlighted as "more powerful than any other poison antidote or theriac."

2021, Alisha Rankin, The Poison Trials, page 179:

(pharmacology, archaic) Synonym of antidote, particularly (pseudoscience) those incorporating snakemeat to cure snakebite.


orgone

en-noun

orgone (countable and uncountable, plural orgones)

Blend of organism + hormone, after German Orgon.

In the present report I shall describe the methods of quantitative measurement of the orgone by means of the electroscope and the thermometer.

1944, Wilhelm Reich, “The Discovery of the Orgone, part 2”, in Theodore P Wolfe, transl., International Journal of Sex-Economy and Orgone-Research, volume III, number 1:

So, boys, when those hot licks play over your balls and prick and dart up your ass like an invisible blue blow torch of orgones, in the words of T. J. Watson, Think.

1962 [1959], William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch, New York: Grove Press:

In the psychoanalytic theory of Wilhelm Reich, a form of sexual energy or life force distributed throughout the universe and available for collection, storage, and further use.


engram

Borrowed from German Engramm which was coined by German evolutionary biologist Richard Semon in 1904. First attested in English in 1921 (see quotation below). Ultimately from Ancient Greek ἐν (en, “in”) + γράμμα (grámma, “writing, picture”).

I use the word engram to denote this permanent change wrought by a stimulus; the sum of such engrams in an organism may be called its "engram-store," among which must distinguish inherited from acquired engrams.

1921 January, Richard Semon, “II (Engraphic Action of Stimuli on the Individual)”, in Louis Simon, transl., The Mneme, Cornell University Library, published 2005, page 24:

A postulated physical or biochemical change in neural tissue that represents a memory.

(Scientology) A painful, negative mental image representing a past event.


vitalism

vitalism (countable and uncountable, plural vitalisms)

Theories and philosophies of vitalism are concerned with the distinction between life and non-life in some form. Given this emphasis, vitalism always has political stakes: where the boundary between life and non-life is drawn is, as theorists of biopolitics have shown, a supremely political matter […] Historically, vitalism has been associated with conservatism and fascism in ways that are sometimes genealogically defensible, sometimes only with difficulty or not at all.

2023, Cat Moir, “What Is Living and What Is Dead In Political Vitalism?”, in Christopher Donohue, Charles T. Wolfe, editors, Vitalism and Its Legacy in Twentieth Century Life Sciences and Philosophy, Springer Nature, →ISBN, page 258:

It seems to me that in vitalism, there are people who are anti-Christian, like Bronze Age Pervert, like the Nazis.

2025 May 1, Ross Douthat, “The New Culture of the Right: Vital, Masculine and Intentionally Offensive”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:

The doctrine that life involves some immaterial "vital force", and cannot be explained scientifically.

vitalisme

doctrine that life involves a "vital force"


perpetual motion machine

perpetual motion machine (plural perpetual motion machines)

(physics, pseudoscience) A hypothetical, pseudoscientific device that exhibits perpetual motion, especially one that does useful work with no input of energy.

perpetual motion machine of the first kind

perpetual motion machine of the second kind


polygraph

/ˈpɒliɡɹɑːf/

(mathematics) A multidimensional directed graph.


polygraphy

The art of writing in various ciphers, and of deciphering the same.

The art or practice of using a polygraph.


cryptozoology

The Loch Ness Monster is one of the mysteries of cryptozoology.

This peculiar situation amplifies the reluctance of conservative scientists to objectively consider the search for hidden animals, the field of cryptozoology. […] Indeed, cryptozoology has gained increasing legitimacy in recent years.

2007, Jeff Meldrum, Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science, Tom Doherty Associates, →ISBN, page 45:

Study of cryptids, animals whose existence has not been proven.


scientific racism

The appearance underlines past incidents in which Pinker has encountered criticism for his association with advocates of so-called “human biodiversity”, which other academics have called a “rebranding” of racial genetic essentialism and scientific racism.

2025 June 7, Jason Wilson, “Harvard author Steven Pinker appears on podcast linked to scientific racism”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:

Racism presented as, or purported to be supported by science.


rumpology

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The claimed ability to foretell the future by reading the characteristics of a person's buttocks.


racialism

racialism (countable and uncountable, plural racialisms)

From racial + -ism. Coined in 1882 based on the older use of "race" as a synonym of "nation, tribe, ethnic group", later senses (from 1890) from the use of "race" for racial categories.

This is The Lie of North American Superiority — an assumption based mainly on our superior living standard. […] This Lie of Superiority, this ill-disguised racialism in us who are always denouncing racialism in other people, is more than an unpleasant breach of good manners. It has deep and evil effects upon the affairs of the world.

Racialism and ultra-nationalism are a major part of the fascist doctrine. We all recall the Hitler emphasis on the Aryan race and I think you can visualize for a moment the Nazi propagandist telling the German people, "You are superior!" Nobody argues with this. If someone confronts you and says, "You know, I am firmly convinced you are the superior type," you don't deny it. […] So the selling of racialism is not nearly as difficult as it might on the surface appear to be. Coupled with this racialism, the ultra-nationalism suggests that if a race is superior why then should it confine itself to the limited territory in which if finds itself.

1959 September 23, E. B. Ader, “Conflicting Political and Economic Systems”, in Naval War College Review, page 8:

Racism, the belief in the existence of different races and the belief that some races are superior to other races; policies or practices which promote the dominance of one or more races over other races.


drapetomania

Coined in 1851 by Samuel A. Cartwright as a name for a supposed mental illness that caused black slaves to flee captivity. Ancient Greek δραπέτης (drapétēs, “runaway slave”) + μανία (manía, “madness”).

uder

To prevent the full-blown development of drapetomania, exhibited by the actual running away of the slave, whipping is recommended as medical therapy; in a revealing allusion to its historical origins, the treatment is called "whipping the devil out of them."

1987, Thomas Stephen Szasz, Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences, →ISBN, page 307:

Over the years, psychiatrists have quite properly rejected many other "disorders" that reflected earlier cultural prejudices, such as drapetomania, lack of vaginal orgasm, childhood masturbation disorder, masochism, and nymphomania (Wakefield, 1992).

1996, Carole Wade, Carol Tavris, Psychology, →ISBN, page 560:

Cartwright opined that following proper medical advice prevented drapetomania and its symptom (running away): The recommended cure was to keep slaves in their "natural" position of submission while providing for their needs, along with whipping at the onset of the disorder.

2006, Yo Jackson, Encyclopedia of Multicultural Psychology, →ISBN, page 158:

Forbidding alcohol, eliminating visits to neighbors at night, and withholding adequate food, shelter, and clothing also were measures taken to prevent drapetomania.

2008, Frederick T. Leong, Encyclopedia of Counseling - Volume 2, →ISBN:

(historical) The desire of slaves to run away, viewed as a mental illness.

漂泊狂

One of these is a supposed form of mental disease, termed by him "Drapetomania, which, like a malady that cats are liable to, manifests itself by an irrestrainable propensity to run away."

I thought I was a hypochondriac because my friends said that I was showing unnecessary concern about my health. Thanks to Dr. Cartwright I now know that I am a diseased man. I suffer from the acute stages of a chronic disease: drapetomania. I have the obsessive desire to run toward freedom. You have the right to know that a diseased man is near you because, and I say this carefully, drapetomania is contagious, and I am glad about it. As a drapetomaniac, I belong at a Freedom Fund Banquet.

1989, David Pilgrim, Race relations "above the veil": speeches, essays, and other writings:

Mark declined and moved into the dark cavern. Strobes and smoke created curtains of imminent light. "You viced up Marky?" said Nick. Faking something close to drapetomania, ...

I still flee from my home to chase dreams. Sometimes I manage to elude capture and sometimes I do not. Is that Drapetomania? Is that Squircular? What do you call it? No results found for squircle. In 2005, for the first time, I wrote but never publicized my personal experience with Drapetomania (or Squircular, if you prefer) in an essalogue with a seven syllable title: An Actor's Tale In the Crazy House with Christ!

2010, Summer Hill Seven (Raymond Abdul-Alim Ákbar), Squircular!: An Actor's Tale, →ISBN, page 87:

(dated) An overwhelming urge to run away (from home, a bad situation, responsibility, etc.).


aromatherapist

(alternative medicine) A practitioner of aromatherapy.


pseudoscientific

en-adj

pseudoscientific (comparative more pseudoscientific, superlative most pseudoscientific)

more pseudoscientific (comparative)
most pseudoscientific (superlative)

From pseudoscience + -ific, by analogy with scientific.

[…] another example of the desire to control deviant lifestyles: the preparation by the FBI of pseudoscientific "profiles" that purport to describe the murderers.

1983 August 13, Mark McHarry, “FBI”, in Gay Community News, volume 11, number 5, page 4:

Many postsecondary educators are concerned about the rising tide of pseudoscientific, fundamentally anti-intellectual belief among otherwise well educated Americans.

1996, Mark E. Ware, David E. Johnson, Handbook of Demonstrations and Activities in the Teaching of Psychology:

Some pseudoscientific theories explain what nonbelievers cannot even observe, for example, orgone energy.

2003, Robert Todd Carroll, The skeptic's dictionary:

Of, relating to, or employing pseudoscience; not scientific, though purporting to be scientific.

псеўданавуко́вы

of, relating to, or employing pseudoscience


creation science

[…] fundamentalist religious believers who look to religious texts (be it the Bible or the Qur'an) to espouse a so-called creation science […].

2013, Kostas Kamourakis, The Philosophy of Biology: A Companion for Educators, page 182:

The case of creation science vis-a-vis theory of evolution, 'Islamic science' (Koran being the source of all scientific knowledge) […]

2006, Ram Puniyani, Contours of Hindu Rashtra, page 321:

[…] the inspired writings, be they the Torah, the Qur'an, or the Bible, are interpreted by some in these traditions as providing literal descriptions of all aspects of reality […] Based upon this assumption the idea of creation science was born.

2003, Ted Peters, Bridging Science and Religion, page 76:

The creation story found in Genesis in the Bible or the Qur'an, presented by fundamentalists as if it were a literal scientific truth.


Bermuda Triangle

en-noun

Bermuda Triangle (plural Bermuda Triangles)

The dryer is a Bermuda Triangle for socks.

The south polar region of Promethei Planum developed a Bermuda Triangle reputation. Satellites detected intermittent mass concentrations and magnetic field shifts. In 2148, prospectors working near Deseado Crater discovered an underground complex: a Prothean observation post. The odd phenomena were generated by the operation and discharge of a mass effect core, struggling to function despite fifty millennia of neglect.

2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Protheans: Mars Ruins Codex entry:

(by extension) Any place where objects mysteriously disappear.

Bermudan kolmio

any area where things mysteriously disappear


biorhythm

/ˈbaɪ.oʊˌɹɪð.əm/

Gay Biorhythms. Be Sure, Be Safe. Biorhythms charted for 1 year. Graphs or calendar. For more information write GCN Box 706.

1977 February 5, “Personal advertisement”, in Gay Community News, volume 4, number 32, page 14:

(pseudoscience) Any of three sinusoidal graphs, normally plotted by computer, having a person's birthdate as origin, that are claimed to give meaningful information about emotional levels, physical energy levels, and mental/psychic sensitivity.


woo woo

en-adj

woo woo (comparative more woo woo, superlative most woo woo)

more woo woo (comparative)
most woo woo (superlative)
woo (alternative)
woo-woo (alternative)
woowoo (alternative)

Uncertain. It has been suggested that "woo woo" is intended to imitate the eerie background music of sci-fi/horror films and television shows. A connection has also been suggested to stereotypical sounds of ghosts (see boo and compare goetia).

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He made a living out of woo woo beliefs.

One person's wonderful supplement is another person's quackery. There are continual skirmishes—if not outright war—between some of the more woo-woo elements of the wellness industry and science and fact-based solutions.

2020 April 3, Brigid Delaney, “Elle Macpherson Is Our May Cover Star”, in Harper's Bazaar, archived from the original on 13 Apr 2020:

(slang, derogatory) Supernatural, pseudoscientific.


radionics

From radio- (“pertaining to rays or radiation”) + (electr)onics.

prefix

Tiller observes that pendulums, dowsing rods and radionics devices all serve to reduce the signal/noise ratio. They help the average individual who is not blessed with the gifts of concentration that are apparently inherent in gifted healers […]

2004, Daniel J. Benor, Consciousness, Bioenergy and Healing, page 465:

Any of several techniques supposed to detect and modulate "life forces" and to provide healing using various electric black boxes.


radionics

From radio- (“pertaining to radio waves”) + (electr)onics.

But it's also because the Cambridge is British made by Sinclair Radionics Ltd, Europe's largest calculator manufacturer, with all the cost advantages of scale that this entails.

1973 August 2, New Scientist, volume 59, number 857, page 273:

(US, rare, now historical) electronics, especially in radio technology.


NLP

neuro-linguistic programming
neuro-linguistic programming#English

(pseudoscience, psychology) Initialism of neuro-linguistic programming.


vitamin B17

pseudoscientific name for the toxic chemical laetrile, commonly used to falsely market it as a vitamin


novelty theory

A theory developed by Terence McKenna that aims to describe "novelty" in the universe based on a combination of numerology and mathematics, and supposed fractal patterns in the I Ching.


phrenologist

The phrenologist, who regulates heart and mind by undulations of the skull, has another system.

1838 (date written), L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter IX, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], published 1842, →OCLC, page 112:

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.

2020 October 5, Paul Turnbull, “Thinking About Craniometry- The Racial Turn”, in Paul Turnbull:

During a skull reading, a phrenologist would measure and carefully feel a person’s head.

2023 November 17, Kendra Cherry, “How a Phrenology Head Was Traditionally Used”, in Verywell Mind:

An adherent or practitioner of phrenology.


polywater

(pseudoscience) A supposed polymeric form of water reported to have been produced in fine capillaries; now known to be illusory.


sentics

From Latin sentiō + -ics. Instigated and named by Austrian neuroscientist Manfred Clynes.

1991 Timothy K. Smith "Manfred Clynes Sees A Pattern in Love -- He's Got the Printouts" in The Wall Street Journal, September 24, front page
Prof. Clynes is a published poet and author of five books. He coined the word "cyborg". He also coined the word "sentics" to describe a new science entirely of his own devising.

A science called sentics is based on the ability of sound and music to induce different states of consciousness.

2005, Francesca McCartney, C. Norman, Body of Health: The New Science of Intuition Medicine for Energy and Balance, New World Library, →ISBN:

2006 Biography of Dr. Manfred Clynes at the Manfred Clynes Institute of Amity and Emotion Research web site
Another of his inventions, the sentograph, measures expressive actions of deliberate expressive pressure of a person's finger. When a person has an emotional experience, such as listening to music, his nervous system acts in a characteristic way, demanding expression, and this can be expressed through by finger pressure, measured on the sentograph. The sentograph allowed Dr. Clynes to discover these characteristic emotional shapes. He found that all of humanity seems to share these emotional shapes. They appear to be programmed materially into the way our nervous system is designed. People in widely dispersed, superficially and racially distinct communities had the exact same sentic form for emotions like anger and love. The study of these phenomena became the science of Sentics, a word Dr. Clynes coined and a field he pioneered.

The study of waveforms of touch, emotion, and music.


tinfoil hat

tinfoil hats (plural)
tin-foil hat (alternative)
tin foil hat (alternative)
TFH (alternative initialism)


magnotherapy

Any of several alternative medicine therapies using magnetism


polygraphist

A person skilled in the operation of a polygraph (lie detector)


polygrapher

A person skilled in the operation of a polygraph.


élan vital

An unadapted borrowing from French élan vital (“life force”, literally “vital impetus or force”), coined by Henri Bergson in 1907.

ubor

Progress was a labyrinth. . . people plunging blindly in and then rushing wildly back, shouting that they had found it. . . the invisible king—the élan vital—the principle of evolution. . .

1920 April, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, chapter 5, in This Side of Paradise, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, book II (The Education of a Personage), page 285:

She turned astonished blue eyes towards Mr. Wimbush, then let them fall on to the seething mass of élan vital that fermented in the sty.

1921, Aldous Huxley, chapter 5, in Crome Yellow, London: Chatto & Windus, page 40:

Electricity! the force of the future—for everything, you know, including the élan vital itself, will soon be proven electrical in nature.

2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, reprint edition (fiction; paperback), New York: Penguin Books, published 2007, →ISBN, →OCLC, →OL, page 714:

The life force or vital principle posited in the philosophy of Henri Bergson; any mysterious or creative vital principle.

élan vital

life force in the philosophy of Henri Bergson


Dianetics

Coined by author and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard from Ancient Greek διά (diá, “through”) + νοῦς (noûs, “mind”); an alteration of dianoetic. Literally means "through the soul".

coined

In psychology, Dianetics drops into line without disturbing anything concerned with staffs or research or teaching posts, for psychology is simply the study of the psyche and now that there exists a science of the psyche it can go ahead with a will. Thus, Dianetics is the enemy of none, and Dianetics falls utterly outside all existing legislation, none of which anticipated or made any provision for a science of mind.

1950, L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics, New Era Publications, published 1999, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 220:

A self-help system designed by L. Ron Hubbard, today chiefly employed in Scientology.

dianetik

self-help system now used in Scientology


cereology

From Ceres (“Roman goddess of agriculture”) + -ology.

suffix

[…] the array of experts who have collaborated to found the Centre for Crop Circle Studies and co-author The Crop Circle Enigma, the parents of cereology […]

1990 October–December, New Scientist, volume 128, London: New Science Publications, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 61:

The result of all this has been to throw the world of cereology into a state of total confusion. All its previous certainties have been demolished.

1991, “Editorial notes”, in The Cereologist: The Journal for Crop Circles Studies, Shepton Mallet, Somerset: The Cereologist, OCLC 877349523, page 5; quoted in Gordon Stein, “Crop Circles”, in The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal, Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1996, ISBN 978-1-57392-021-6, page 185, column 1

Saucer enthusiasts argued that the cropland patterns marked the landing spots of UFOs bearing visitors from space. Believers in the paranormal claimed the circles radiated mysterious energy forces. The patterns spawned a kind of intellectual cottage industry: no fewer than 35 Britons claim to be experts on the phenomenon. A new scientific discipline, cereology, emerged. It is practiced by members of the Circles Effect Research Unit, a privately funded group headed by Wiltshire-based physicist Terence Meaden.

1991 September 23, Leon Jaroff, “It happens in the best circles”, in Time, archived from the original on 11 Nov 2016:

The world needed to be educated about the mysteries of cereology, and that knowledge base had not been disseminated widely enough for my more "unusual" theories to be accepted, or at least considered, with reason and open-mindedness.

2003, Colin Andrews, Stephen J. Spignesi, “The Path”, in Crop Circles: Signs of Contact, Franklin Lakes, N.J.: New Page Books, →ISBN, page 29, column 1:

The investigation, or practice, of creating crop circles.


life force

en-noun

life force (countable and uncountable, plural life forces)

An impulse or influence that gives something life or vitality.


bioenergy

bioenergy (countable and uncountable, plural bioenergies)

→ Polish: bioenergia

(New Age) A form of spiritual energy or life force.


iridologist

A practitioner of iridology; the practice of inspecting the iris in order to ascertain a persons health or to diagnose a health condition.


Japhetic

en-adj

Japhetic (comparative more Japhetic, superlative most Japhetic)

more Japhetic (comparative)
most Japhetic (superlative)
Iapetic (alternative)
Japhethic (alternative)

The English Japheth or the Latin Iapetus, + -ic. Coined in the first half of the 19th century alongside Semitic and Hamitic.

(obsolete, ethnography) Of or pertaining to the supposed descendants of Japheth, one of the three sons of Noah in the Bible.


cranioscopy

en-noun

cranioscopy (countable and uncountable, plural cranioscopies)

A theory that was totally wrong helped focus attention on the right questions. Some people called it phrenology. Its founder, Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) called it cranioscopy. . . . It held that the brain had specific areas of function and that mental and moral attributes of a person could be determined by examination of the cranium.

1978, William J. Broad, “Lost in Thought”, in Science News, volume 114, number 22, page 361:


flat-earther

flat-earthers (plural)
flat earther (alternative)
flatearther (alternative)
flat Earther (alternative)
flat-Earther (alternative)

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His commitment to remaining a flat-earther seems to be strengthened by counterarguments rather than weakened by them.

A person who believes or advocates the claim that the planet Earth is flat.


Ayurvedic

Pertaining to or characteristic of Ayurveda.


tulpa

tulpa (plural tulpa or tulpas or (often in sense 2) tulpae)

tulpa (plural)
tulpas (plural)
tulpae (often plural)

From Tibetan སྤྲུལ་པ (sprul pa, “emanation, magical creation”), equivalent to a calque of Sanskrit निर्मित (nirmita, “build”) or निर्माण (nirmāṇa, “build”).

bor

When the year was up, the tulpa began growing. It lost its fear of its master and began taking on new forms of its own. It ceased to run errands ....

1966, Nikos Kazantzakis, England: A Travel Journal, page 110:

(Buddhism, mysticism) A magical creature that attains corporeal reality, having been originally merely imaginary.

トゥルパ

magical creature that attains corporeal reality, having been imaginary


acupoint

Blend of acupuncture + point. By surface analysis, acu- + point.

An important aspect of the "barefoot doctors" treatment is G-Jo. G-Jo rests on the same philosophy as acupuncture, acupressure, Shiatsu and the other acupoint stimulation therapies.

1979, George J. Feiss, Mind Therapies, Body Therapies, page 59:

(alternative medicine) A specific point on the body where acupuncture or acupressure is applied.

穴位

a specific point on the body where acupuncture is applied


moxibustion

en-noun

moxibustion (countable and uncountable, plural moxibustions)

Blend of moxa (“mugwort”) + combustion (“burning”), literally "burning of mugwort", with the connecting -i- usual in Latinate vocabulary.

blend

Traditional Chinese medicine includes herbal remedy, diet therapy, use of animal secretion and organs, acupuncture, massage, moxibustion (the application of a burning moxa plant to skin), and other folk methods.

1998, Lin Zhan, edited by Lin Zhan, Asian Voices: Asian and Asian-American Health Educators Speak Out, Jones and Bartlett Publishers, →ISBN, Xi Young Hong: Health Practice in Chinese Older Women, page 36:

(folk medicine) The burning of moxa against the skin to treat pain or illness.


ear candling

(alternative medicine) An alternative medicine practice supposed to assist the natural clearing of earwax from a person's ear, involving lighting one end of a hollow candle and placing the other end in the ear canal.


pseudoscientist

pseudoscientists (plural)
pseudo-scientist (alternative)

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Near-synonym: scientician (in its modern sense)

The pseudoscientist will claim that these theories are well supported by the evidence...

1972, Michael Martin, Concepts of Science Education: A Philosophical Analysis:

(derogatory) A practitioner of pseudoscience; a bogus or sham scientist.


geopathic

en-adj

geopathic (comparative more geopathic, superlative most geopathic)

more geopathic (comparative)
most geopathic (superlative)

This informative book will help you protect your health and well-being at home and at work, by explaining what GS is and how its energies react with the body;

1996, Jane Thurnell-Read, Geopathic Stress: How Earth Energies Affect Our Lives:

GEOPATHIC STRESS / The Earth has its own subtle energy field and meridians (called ley lines). If the earth's grid is disturbed, creating geopathic stress

2002, Judy Hall, Crystal User's Handbook: An Illustrated Guide, page 72:

As geopathic stress often occurs in thin bands, relocating the bed elsewhere

2007, Herbert Ross with Keri Brenner, Alternative Medicine Magazine's Definitive Guide to Sleep Disorders, page 172:

Relating to the theory that natural irregularities in the earth's magnetic field can be intensified by power lines, underground pipelines, and other natural and man-made features such that a stress field harmful to human health and well-being is created.


lie detector

lie detectors (plural)
lie-detector (alternative)

From lie + detector. First use appears c. 1909. See cite below.

It is a lie detector; with its aid one can plumb the bottomless pits of a chap's subconscious mind, and fathom all the mysteries of his subliminal ego.

1909, Charles Edmonds Walk, The Yellow Circle, page 69:

(informal) A device designed to detect or indicate when a person is lying by measuring and recording several physiological variables.


lie detection

(informal) The use of polygraphs during interrogation in an attempt to verify the truth or falsity of a subject's responses

(loosely) The use of any technique intended to detect deception.


pseudoscientifically

en-adv

pseudoscientifically (comparative more pseudoscientifically, superlative most pseudoscientifically)

more pseudoscientifically (comparative)
most pseudoscientifically (superlative)

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From pseudoscientific + -ally or pseudo- + scientifically.

...the pseudoscientifically backed racist ideology about Jews...


debunker

Interest Rate Observer, and a debunker of U.S. stocks since the Dow was at 2,000, has appeared on Rukeyser's TV show, where he gets bear-baited: "World's going to hell again, eh, Jim?"

2000, John Rothchild, The Bear Book: Survive and Profit in Ferocious Markets, page 19:

Still, something strange was afoot in Rendlesham, and even if the file is unlikely to satisfy either ufologists or debunkers, it suggests that the truth is still out there.

2002 December 8, Scott Veale, “Word for Word/The Rendlesham File; Let There Be Lights: Britons Get One Less Thing to Worry About”, in The New York Times:

Philip J. Klass belonged to the small and somewhat peculiar class of individuals known as debunkers.

2005 December 25, Michael Sokolove, “The Debunker”, in The New York Times Magazine:


Rolfing

en-noun

Rolfing (countable and uncountable, plural Rolfings)

From Rolf + -ing.
From Ida Pauline Rolf, the creator of Rolfing.

(pseudoscience) A form of deep tissue massage.


ayurvedic

Cameron Alborzian, a yogi, ayurvedic therapist and onetime model (seen in these pictures), used to teach at Integral Yoga and has seen guys show up in all kinds of stuff.

2009 January 29, David Colman, “Yoga and the Missing Boutique”, in New York Times:


ayurvedically

But short of a yogamentalist, few men would wear giant palazzo pants made of 100 percent extra-organic sustainable cotton that has probably been put through the digestive tract of an ayurvedically certified elephant and bleached by pure Buddhist thought.

As a practitioner of Ayurveda; in an Ayurvedic way.


cerealogist

One who practices or studies cerealogy, or crop circles.


chromotherapy

chromotherapy (usually uncountable, plural chromotherapies)

(alternative medicine) A form of alternative medicine involving the therapeutic use of color and light.


chemtrail

Blend of chemical + trail, modelled on contrail, late 1990s.

You and me watching / Chemtrails is where we belong / That's what I mean when we talk in this jetstream

2008, Beck, “Chemtrails”, in Modern Guilt:

“We are going to stop this crime,” Kennedy [RFK Jr], who is known for his contrarian stances on vaccines and offshore wind farms, wrote about chemtrails on X in August.[…] Now, scientists are faced with a resurgent focus on chemtrails amid a related, more substantive, debate over whether actual modifications to the Earth’s atmosphere should be made in a desperate attempt to slow global heating.

2024 December 26, Oliver Milman, “Chemtrail conspiracy theories: why RFK Jr is watching the skies”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:

Conspiracy theories have become so mainstream that they are even prompting nonsensical legislation. Earlier this month, Louisiana lawmakers sent a bill to the state’s governor seeking to ban “chemtrails” – which don’t actually exist. […] Lawmakers in at least 11 other states are trying to advance similar “chemtrail” bans.

2025 June 17, Arwa Mahdawi, “What SJP’s selfie trick tells us about the terrifying rise of conspiracy theories”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:

(often in the plural) A contrail consisting of chemicals or biological agents deliberately sprayed at high altitudes, according to certain conspiracy theories.


red mercury

A supposed substance for use in the creation of nuclear bombs and other weapons, about which there are various conspiracy theories.


reparative therapy

reparative therapy (countable and uncountable, plural reparative therapies)

Sheldon and about 70 supporters met all day at Sheraton Hotel here to map expansion of TVC's "reparative therapy for enslaved people afflicted with gender-identity conflict" and develop strategies to defeat initiatives that would classify gay "behavior" as a civil right.

1990 February 4, John Zeh, “Hundreds Protest Homosexuality 'Summit'”, in Gay Community News, volume 17, number 29, page 1:

Reparative therapy is not a cure in the sense of erasing all homosexual feelings. It is however, a successful treatment strengthening masculine identification.

1991, Joseph Nicolosi, “Reparative therapy of male homosexuality: A new clinical approach”, in Jason Aronson:

conversion therapy
conversion therapy#English

(LGBTQ, pseudoscience) Synonym of conversion therapy.


conversion therapy

conversion therapy (countable and uncountable, plural conversion therapies)

(LGBTQ, pseudoscience) The practice of psychiatric or psychological treatment to attempt to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of an LGBT person; used especially as an attempt to turn gay people heterosexual.

sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts


Young Earth creationism

YEC (alternative)
YECism (alternative)
Young Earth Creationism (alternative)
young-earth creationism (alternative)
young earth creationism (alternative)
young Earth creationism (alternative)

(creationism, pseudoscience) Belief that the universe and the Earth are 6,000 to 10,000 years old as inferred from a literal interpretation of the creation narrative in Genesis.


ex-gay

(especially in the plural) A person who considers themselves or is considered by others to be no longer homosexual, usually due to conversion therapy.


biorhythmic

Rob, you are my biorhythmic soulmate and I'd sure like to get together with you.

1977 August 27, “October 25, 1949 (personal advertisement)”, in Gay Community News, volume 5, number 8, page 14:


Champissage

A trademark; perhaps from Hindi [script needed] (chāmpi) and massage.

A form of Indian head massage, supposed to release pent-up negative energies.


paleocontact

ancient astronauts
ancient astronauts#English

The theory that intelligent extraterrestrial beings (sometimes called ancient astronauts) visited Earth in the distant past, influencing human culture, technology, or religion.


feed a cold, starve a fever

An old wives' tale that dates back to 1574 from the original "Fasting is a great remedie of fever."

"Feed a cold, starve a fever." There is a deal of wisdom in the first part of this advice. A person with a catarrh should take an abundance of light nutritious food, and some light wine, but avoid spirits, and above all tobacco.

1887, J. H. Whelan, “The Treatment of Colds,”, in The Practitioner, volume 38, page 180:

I have a cold. 'Feed a cold, starve a fever.' You certainly know that.

1968, Katinka Loeser, The Archers at Home, New York: Atheneum, page 60:

They say feed a cold, starve a fever, but they don't tell you what to do when you got both, so I figured scrambled eggs, tea, and toast.

2009, Shelly Reuben, Tabula Rasa, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, →ISBN, page 60:

Expressing the common belief that eating more will cure the common cold, and eating less will cure a fever.

nourrir un rhume et affamer une fièvre

proverb expressing the belief that eating more cures a cold while eating less cures a fever

風邪には大食, 熱には絶食

kaze ni wa taishoku, netsu ni wa zesshoku


charmstone

A mineral specimen used in various cultural and spiritual traditions for its supposed mystical energies.


crystal healing

Demonstrated by experienced professionals, the fair will provide the opportunity to learn about unique healing methods such as Chakra Healing, Sound Therapy, Reiki, Kinesiology and Crystal Healing.

2023 December 21, The Central Coast Community News, NSW, page 16, column 2:

(alternative medicine) The practice of using the supposed therapeutic effects of crystals to cure illness.


cloudbuster

cloudbusters (plural)
cloud buster (alternative)

A pseudoscientific device supposed to drain clouds of orgone and thus cause rain.


Indigo child

Coined in the 1970s by Nancy Ann Tappe, a synaesthete who claimed to perceive most children under the age of ten with an indigo aura.

Adults misunderstand this behavior as being contrary or difficult, when it is simply the Indigo child attempting to find emotional respite.

1989, Barbara Bowers, What Color is Your Aura?, page 203:

(New Age) A child believed to be the next stage of human evolution; believed to have paranormal abilities like telepathy, or to be more empathic, independent, and creative than his or her peers.


breatharian

/bɹɛˈθɛə.ɹi.ən/

/bɹɛˈθɛ.ɹi.ən/

Those who suspect a growing homogeneity in the once-eccentric East Village may find comfort in Dr. David Jubb, a New Age health guru who runs Jubb's Longevity on East 12th Street and claims to be a breatharian, taking light and air as his primary nourishment.

2005 February 6, Jennifer Bleyer, “He Must Be a Dream to Cook For”, in The New York Times:

One who lives without food, subsisting instead on prana or sunlight.


breatharianism

/ˌbɹɛˈθɛəɹi.ənˌɪzəm/

Wiley Brooks, the guru of Breatharianism, espouses a system of physical vitality by which one may stop eating and drinking entirely, and live, lichenlike, off light and air.

1988, Rev. Ivan Stang, High Weirdness by Mail, New York: Fireside, →ISBN, →OL, page 33:

An exponent of Breatharianism named Wiley Brooks, a handsome, very thin black man in his forties, headed the Breatharian Institute of America, and in 1983 claimed not to have consumed anything except an occasional glass of fruit juice for eighteen years.

1998, Ricky Jay, “The Ultimate Diet: The Art and Artifice of Fasting”, in Jay's Journal of Anomalies, volume 4, number 1:

Followers of the cult Breatharianism believe that the energy they save on digesting food and drink can be transformed into physical, emotional and spiritual energy.

2012 April 25, “Woman starves to death in spiritual quest to live on sunlight alone”, in Daily Mail:

The belief in, or practice of, living without food, subsisting instead on prana or sunlight.


pseudo-linguistics

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-pseudo-linguistics.wav

From pseudo- + linguistics. First attested 1962 (OED).
Modelled on the earlier adjective pseudolinguistic (as in "pseudolinguistic science", attested 1915).

Roy Medvedev deals with the less known but even odder pseudo-linguistics of Nikolai Marr.

Los Angeles Times (Nexis) 2 May 2004, R7

Work purporting to fall under the scholarly field of linguistics but falling short of its standards; linguistic pseudo-scholarship.


Nibiru

(in the works of Zecharia Sitchin) A supposed planet in a highly elliptic orbit around the Sun.


HBD

human biodiversity
human biodiversity#English


odic

en-adj

odic (comparative more odic, superlative most odic)

more odic (comparative)
most odic (superlative)

From od + -ic, modelled after German odisch.

Reichenbach has detected, or fancies that he has detected a force, which he designates the odic force, distinct from magnetism and electricity, by which many of the more recondite phenomena of nature are apparently effected.

1853, Southern Literary Messenger, volume 19, page 389:

Such was the origin of the delusions of "animal magnetism," and "odic" and "psychic" force—claims that belong to cerebro-physiology, a department of science that is now but just passing out of the territorial into the organized stage.

1878 July, George Miller Beard, The Scientific Study of Human Testimony, Part III, in Popular Science Monthly, Volume 13

With his death, not only the odic theory but the whole conception of animal magnetism would appear to have been buried and forgotten, the only references, as this one from Garrison's History of Medicine, being of a disparaging nature: ‘The whole subject was exploited in various mystic forms ... by Baron von Reichenbach, whose concept of odic force still survives in ouija boards and odic telephones.’

1973, Aubrey T. Westlake, The Pattern of Health: A Search for a Greater Understanding of the Life Force in Health and Disease, page 32:

(pseudoscience, historical) Synonym of odylic (“of or pertaining to the od or odyle (“a hypothetical force or natural power, now proved not to exist, which was supposed by Carl Reichenbach and others to inhere in certain people and produce phenomena such as animal magnetism and mesmerism, and to be developed by various agencies, as by chemical or vital action, heat, light, magnets, etc.”)”)


hyperdiffusion

en-noun

hyperdiffusion (countable and uncountable, plural hyperdiffusions)

(pseudoscience) Pseudoarchaeological hypothesis that postulated that historical technologies can be traced to a single civilization.


zootherapeutic

Zootherapeutic uses of the cockroach, many still current and treated as folk medicine by most modern practitioners, are found worldwide.

2003, Marion Copeland, Cockroach, page 82:


remote viewing

(parapsychology) A paranormal ability by which a person can gather information about a distant unseen target.

遠端觀察 /远端观察

paranormal ability to gather information from great distances


raciology

raciology (countable and uncountable, plural raciologies)

From racio- + -logy, apparently as a calque of German Rassenkunde. Related to French raciologie. First attested in 1924.

(dated) The scientific study of human race.


colorpuncture

/ˈkʌl.əˌpʌŋk.t͡ʃɜ/

/ˈkʌl.ɚˌpʌŋk.t͡ʃɝ/

(alternative medicine) A form of alternative medicine in which coloured light is shone on acupoints.


fan death

(South Korea) A form of death supposedly caused by staying overnight in a closed room in which an electric fan is operating.

电风扇致死

death supposedly caused by staying overnight in a closed room with an electric fan


mesmerizable

en-adj

mesmerizable (comparative more mesmerizable, superlative most mesmerizable)

more mesmerizable (comparative)
most mesmerizable (superlative)
mesmerisable (alternative)

(archaic, pseudoscience, of metals, etc.) Capable of storing a hypnotic force.


kerokan

Whatever injuries the women may have suffered, the lawyers said, were self-inflicted in the practice of a traditional Indonesian folk cure known as kerokan.

2007 December 3, Paul Vitello, “From Stand in Long Island Slavery Case, a Snapshot of a Hidden U.S. Problem”, in New York Times:

A sometimes injurious traditional Indonesian folk cure wherein a coin or ladle is drawn across the back in order to draw wind or bad spirits from the body.


zootherapy

en-noun

zootherapy (countable and uncountable, plural zootherapies)

The use of living animals for medical treatment or as an adjunct to medical diagnosis.


laserpuncture

A pseudoscientific therapy, based on acupuncture, in which lasers are shone at acupoints.


sugar high

It was intoxicating. But is college football simply a dose of cotton candy — good for a sugar high but bad for the system?

2024 October 4, John Branch, “What Does College Football Have to Do With College?”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:

A state of hyperactivity caused by excessive consumption of sugar.


simillimum

(homeopathy) A remedy selected because it causes symptoms similar to those that the practitioner wishes to treat.


neo-creo

en-adj

neo-creo (comparative more neo-creo, superlative most neo-creo)

more neo-creo (comparative)
most neo-creo (superlative)

I come at last to the most basic difficulty with the neo-creo attack, it's dim suggestions that the scientific world needs a shot of supernaturalism.

2003, Phillip Kitcher, “Born-Again Creationism”, in In Mendel's Mirror: Philosophical Reflections on Biology, New York: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, LCC QH331.K6145 2003, page 373:


James's powder

Named after Dr. Robert James, an English physician.

(medicine, archaic) A powder consisting of one part oxide of antimony and two parts calcium phosphate, once falsely claimed to have medical benefits.


YEC

en-noun

YEC (countable and uncountable, plural YECs)

Young Earth creationism
Young Earth creationism#English

(uncountable) Initialism of Young Earth creationism.


Baunscheidtism

From Baunscheidt + -ism, after its founder Carl Baunscheidt (1809–1873), a German mechanic and inventor.

(medicine) A form of acupuncture with toxic oil, causing inflammation that is alleged to draw the body's "attention" away from the patient's illness, thus effecting a cure.


Vulcanian

Directly from Latin Vulcāniānus or from Latin Vulcānius + -an within English, from Vulcānus + -iānus (“-ian”) or -ius (“-y: forming adjectives”). In reference to a type or stage of volcanic activity, via Italian Vulcaniano, with specific reference to Giuseppe Mercalli's observations of the 1888–90 eruptions of the Aeolian island Vulcano. Equivalent to Vulcan + -ian. Doublet of volcanian. Compare slightly earlier Middle French vulcanien.

...Nor cou'd Vulcanian Flame
The Stench abolish; or the Savour tame...

1697, John Dryden translating Vergil as Georgics, Book III, in The Works of Virgil, p. 121

(Roman mythology) Of, related to, or created by Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and metalwork, considered equivalent to the Greek Hephaestus and several German and Celtic gods.

Yet Muto, like a good Vulcanian,
An honest Cuckold, calls the bastard sonne,
And brags of that which others for him done.

1598, John Marston, “Certaine Satyres”, in The Metamorphosis of Pigmalions Image..., page 41:

(rare, obsolete) Alternative letter-case form of vulcanian, a cuckold.

In his six lectures on Volcanos, [Faujas] exhausted the subject, and showed us the difference of the several systems, the Vulcanian, the Neptunian, and the Huttonian, which is the Plutonian, and his own opinion.

1803, Stephen Weston, Praise of Paris, page 58:

The Vulcanian or Plutonian theory, which ascribes the changes on earth's surface to the agency of fire.

1870, Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, page 939:

(geology, now rare, archaic) Alternative letter-case form of vulcanian, volcanic, of or related to volcanoes and volcanism.

(historical) Of or related to former theories attributing the origin of basalt and other crystalline minerals to subterranean fires.

(astronomy) Of or related to the proposed planet Vulcan or a cluster of asteroids at the same location in the Solar System.


odylic

From odyle, odyl + -ic (suffix meaning of or pertaining to forming adjectives from nouns). Odyle, odyl is derived from od (borrowed from German Od, arbitrarily coined by the German scientist and philosopher Carl Reichenbach (1788–1869)) + Ancient Greek ῡ̔́λη (hū́lē, “wood; material, matter, substance”).

der

A bundle of bars or of horse-shoes, placed with like magnetic poles in contact, has its odylic poles reversed, so as to alternate with each other.

1850, Karl, Baron von Reichenbach [i.e., Carl Reichenbach], “Eighth Treatise. Luminous Phenomena.”, in William Gregory, transl., Researches on Magnetism, Electricity, Heat, Light, Crystallization, and Chemical Attraction, in Their Relations to the Vial Force. […], London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly, […]; Edinburgh: MacLachlan & Stewart, →OCLC, part II, paragraph 378, page 303:

If the laboratory of the professor could be graced with the odylometer, the odylic battery, and the snail telegraph, what a blaze of odylic light would be concentrated there from the past, the present, and the future! And who could endure it but those whose bodies had long "bathed in odylic light," and whose minds had been long saturated with odylic belief? Such are some few of the notions and statements which we find in Professor Gregory's book. As we have read them, we have paused, we know not how often, and asked, Can it be that Dr. Gregory, the Professor of Chemistry in Edinburgh, really believes as he writes? May it not, after all, be a burlesque?

1851 October, W. H., “Art. XI.—Letters to a Candid Inquirer on Animal Magnetism. By William Gregory, M.D., F.R.S.E., Professor of Chemistry in the University of Edinburgh. Philadelphia: Blanchard and Lea, 1851. [book review]”, in Isaac [Minis] Hays, editor, The American Journal of the Medical Sciences, volume XXII (New Series), number XLIV, Philadelphia, Pa.: Blanchard & Lea, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 441:

I believe it is the odylic vapour which has been attached to seeds found in the case of a mummy, which, after 3,000 years, makes that seed germinate.

1863, [Samuel Guppy], “Finis”, in Mary Jane; or, Spiritualism Chemically Explained with Spirit Drawings. […], London: […] John King & Co., […], →OCLC, page 363:

The odylic light generally confines itself to more or less luminous spots, e.g., around the finger-tips, the eyes, the mouth, the solar plexus, etc., but does not generally appear as a complete aura surrounding the body at a distance from it, except to more clairvoyant people who are said to be able to see this light, in both light and darkness, in the form of an aura with the ordinary colours, red on the left side and blue on the right.

1913 August, F. C. Wehmeyer, “Seeing the Aura by the Aid of Coloured Screens”, in Annie Besant, editor, The Theosophist: A Magazine of Brotherhood, Oriental Philosophy, Art, Literature and Occultism, volume XXXIV, part II, number 11, Adyar, Madras, Tamil Nadu: Theosophical Publishing House, →OCLC, page 719:

One of the most important modifications of the original theory of the magnetic fluid was instituted in the forties by the Baron Carl von Reichenbach who renamed it the Odylic Force and incorporated it into an esoteric lore of poles and passes in which a number of secondary polarities in the human body were postulated, […]

1976, E[sther] M. Thornton, “New Developments in Germany”, in Hypnotism, Hysteria and Epilepsy: An Historical Synthesis, London: William Heinemann Medical Books, →ISBN, page 73:

(pseudoscience, historical) Of or pertaining to the od or odyle (“a hypothetical force or natural power, now proved not to exist, which was supposed by Carl Reichenbach and others to inhere in certain people and produce phenomena such as animal magnetism and mesmerism, and to be developed by various agencies, as by chemical or vital action, heat, light, magnets, etc.”).


hexagonal water

(alternative medicine) Water claimed to have a six-sided ring structure which resonates with energetic vibrations of the body.


metallotherapy

(medicine, historical) A former supposed treatment of disease by applying metal plates to the surface of the body.


jelq

A penis enlargement technique in which the thumb and index finger are wrapped around the penis and repeatedly drawn away from the body in order to force blood into the glans and encourage vascularity.


Thomsonianism

From Thomsonian + -ism, after its founder Dr. Samuel Thomson (1769-1843).

(medicine) A form of alternative medicine that claims the human body is composed of four elements (earth, air, fire, and water) and should be treated with herbs.


erototoxin

/ɪˌɹɒtəʊˈtɒksɪn/

Judith Reisman of the California Protective Parents Association suggested that more study of "erototoxins" could show how pornography is not speech-protected under the First Amendment.

2004 November 19, Ryan Singel, “Internet Porn: Worse Than Crack?”, in Wired, →ISSN:

As we saw in the previous chapter, pornographic erototoxins always bypass cognition and speech, reaching the right brain instantly to trigger excitatory transmitters and to overcome inhibitory transmitter functions.

2005, Ron Luce, Battle Cry for a Generation: The Fight To Save America's Youth, Colorado Springs: Cook Communications Ministries, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 99:

And the winner is...Sam Brownback, who considered spending more tax money to explore the “addictive,” “mind-altering,” porn poisons that one witness called “erototoxins.”

2005 May/June, Jack Hitt, “The Diddly Award”, in Mother Jones, →ISSN:

There is no such thing as an "erototoxin", of course, but there are pleasure chemicals that are released in the brain called endorphins and they are released in a wide range of activities, including physical exercise, laughter and — surprise, surprise — sex itself.

2005 July 25, Ed Brayton, “Robert O'Brien Trophy Awarded to Judith Reisman”, in Dispatches from the Creation Wars, archived from the original on 08 Mar 2012:

Not Reisman: erototoxins aren’t about pleasure; they’re a “fear-sex-shame-and-anger stimulant.”

2007 October 1, Mark Pilkington, Far Out: 101 Strange Tales from Science's Outer Edge, New York: The Disinformation Company, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OL:

But there is no good evidence to support the claims of pseudo-experts like Dr Judith Reisman that pornography is what she calls [an] 'erototoxin', producing an addictive drug cocktail of testosterone, oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin, which cause the brain to be ‘structurally’ changed.

2010, Bettina Arndt, What Men Want in Bed, Melbourne University Publishing, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 53:

An addictive chemical said to be released in the brain from looking at pornography.


ancient astronaut

en-noun

ancient astronaut (plural ancient astronauts)

Is it possible for scientists to demonstrate that ancient astronauts have ever been here? No.

2001, Charles M. Wynn, Arthur W. Wiggins, Sidney Harris, Quantum leaps in the wrong direction: where real science ends-- and pseudoscience begins, Joseph Henry Press, page 58

Although academics have spent many hours showing the errors in von Däniken's reasoning, the Ancient Astronaut notion remains alive.

2002, Michael Shermer, The Skeptic encyclopedia of pseudoscience, Volume 2, ABC-CLIO, page 530:

According to certain authors, intelligent extraterrestrial beings called ancient astronauts or ancient aliens have visited Earth, and this contacts is connected with the origins or development of human cultures, technologies, and religions.

2011, George Romero, The Rescue, George Romero, page 32:

Any of the extraterrestrial beings that, according to the pseudoscientific belief of paleocontact, visited Earth in the distant past, influencing human culture, technology, or religion.

ancien astronaute

extraterrestrial associated with paleocontact


Perkinism

From Perkins + -ism, after inventor Elisha Perkins (1741–1799).

(medicine, archaic) A pseudoscientific treatment in which two pointed metal rods ("tractors") were waved over the body, supposed to cure inflammation, rheumatism, etc. by drawing off an electrical fluid.


vital force

vital force (countable and uncountable, plural vital forces)

A hypothetical force that is the causative agent for the development of life.


ozone therapy

ozone therapy (usually uncountable, plural ozone therapies)

ozone therapies (plural)
ozonetherapy (alternative)

(alternative medicine) A treatment that purports to increase the amount of oxygen to the body through the introduction of ozone by various means.


Krebiozen

A discredited former cancer treatment usually consisting of creatine in mineral oil.


gua sha

From Mandarin 刮痧 (guāshā, literally “scrape sand”).

bor

traditional Chinese medicine
traditional Chinese medicine

A treatment used in traditional Chinese medicine involving repeated pressured strokes over the skin with a hard object thereby breaking surface capillaries and leaving light bruising, claimed to release unhealthy bodily matter.


zoism

(dated) A former doctrine claiming that the phenomena of life are due to a peculiar vital principle; the theory of vital force.


aetherometry

(pseudoscience) A so-called science of energy that has no mass equivalent.


biofield

A supposed field of energy or life force that surrounds or permeates a living thing.


antineoplaston

From anti- + neoplastic + -on, coined by Stanislaw Burzynski.

Any of a group of peptides and other compounds used in a controversial unproven therapy against cancer.

antineoplaston

any of a group of peptides and other compounds used in alternative cancer treatment


assemblage point

en-noun

assemblage point (plural assemblage points)

(alternative medicine) Any vortex of an energy field (including but not limited to any given organism).


biodetoxification

(pseudoscience) Any of various spurious personal nutritional detoxification processes


odyle

From od + Ancient Greek ῡ̔́λη (hū́lē, “wood; material, matter, substance”).

(pseudoscience, historical) Synonym of od (“a hypothetical force or natural power, now proved not to exist, which was supposed by Carl Reichenbach and others to inhere in certain people and produce phenomena such as animal magnetism and mesmerism, and to be developed by various agencies, as by chemical or vital action, heat, light, magnets, etc.”).


odylism

(pseudoscience, historical) Belief in the vital force called od or odyle.


genetic sexual attraction

A claimed phenomenon of sexual attraction between relatives and family members who were not raised together.


oil pulling

A traditional Ayurvedic folk remedy where vegetable oil is swished or held in the mouth, thereby supposedly "pulling out" toxins.


quantum mysticism

A set of metaphysical beliefs and practices that seek to relate consciousness, intelligence, or mystical world-views to the ideas of quantum mechanics and its interpretations.


energy medicine

energy medicine (countable and uncountable, plural energy medicines)

A branch of alternative medicine based on the belief that a healer can channel healing energy into a patient by various methods.


Mozart effect

Calque of French effet Mozart, a term coined by Alfred A. Tomatis (1920–2001), who used Mozart's music as the listening stimulus in his work attempting to cure a variety of disorders.

The supposed phenomenon by which listening to Mozart's music may induce a short-term improvement in spatiotemporal reasoning or in mental performance generally.

تَأْثِير مُوتْسَارْت

supposed phenomenon by which listening to Mozart induces improvement in mental performance


pseudoarchaeology

pseudoarchaeology (countable and uncountable, plural pseudoarchaeologies)

pseudoarchaeologies (plural)
pseudoarcheology (alternative)

Pseudoarchaeology appeals to people who are impatient with the deliberate pace of science and who like to believe that “there is always a faint possibility that…” Some of these “cult archaeologies” show all the signs of becoming personality cults, even religious movements.

2016, Brian M. Fagan, Nadia Durrani, Archaeology: A Brief Introduction, 12th edition, Routledge, →ISBN, page 45:

The chapters in part 1, “Case Studies in Alternative Constructions of the Past: Methods, Ideologies, and Practitioners,” present examples of the nature and culture of pseudoarchaeologies and related alternative constructions of the past.

2016, Jeb J. Card, David S. Anderson, editors, Lost City, Found Pyramid: Understanding Alternative Archaeologies and Pseudoscientific Practices, University of Alabama Press, →ISBN, page 14:


polarity therapy

A form of energy medicine based on the idea that a person's health is subject to positive and negative electromagnetic charges.


Zone diet

So called because the diet involves keeping certain clinical markers within certain ranges or "zones".

A diet that advocates consuming calories from carbohydrates and protein in a balanced ratio.


Bates method

Named after the physician William Horatio Bates (1860–1931), who attributed nearly all sight problems to habitual strain of the eyes, and felt that glasses were harmful and never necessary.

An alternative eyesight therapy based on visualization, movement, and imagining visual marks and signs.


Alexander technique

Developed by Frederick Matthias Alexander in the 1890s.

“Ma Rainey's Black Bottom,” he read aloud. “What's ‘Alexander Technique?’”
“Theory of standing.”

2013, Iris Smyles, Iris Has Free Time, Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, →ISBN, page 8:

A technique in alternative medicine that attempts to prevent unnecessary levels of muscular and mental tension during everyday activities.

técnica de Alexander

technique to prevent unnecessary levels of muscular and mental tension during everyday activities


Eutony

A form of energy medicine devised by Gerda Alexander (1908–1994).


Vivation

Trade name, perhaps from Latin vīvā (“living”) + -ation.

A form of breathwork that claims to improve wellbeing through the use of circular breathing.


Bach flower therapy

Bach flower therapy (countable and uncountable, plural Bach flower therapies)


potentization

potentization (countable and uncountable, plural potentizations)

The vigorous shaking of a homeopathic medicine, supposed to make it more effective.


myofascial release

A soft tissue therapy that attempts to treat skeletal muscle immobility and pain by stretching the fascia.


total allergy syndrome

DO YOU REMEMBER the "total allergy syndrome"? Barely more than a couple of years ago, worthy citizens of this sceptre'd isle were flaking out all over the place because the poor unfortunates believed themselves allergic to the world — not just, say to crabs or house mites or pencillin, or any other of the items on the long list of proven allergies which cause some of us to itch or wheeze or drop down dead.

1984, New Scientist, volume 104, number 1425, page 34:

A supposed illness with various symptoms caused by sensitivity to various substances in the modern environment.


leaky gut syndrome

(alternative medicine) A supposed medical condition where an altered or damaged bowel lining or gut wall allows substances such as toxins, microbes, undigested food, or waste to leak through, triggering an immune reaction and leading to other disorders.


therapeutic touch

A form of alternative medicine whose practitioners claim to manipulate patients' energy fields and promote healing by placing their hands on or near the patient.


facilitated communication

The now-discredited technique of assisting a person with a disability to communicate by helping them to point out letters of the alphabet on a board so as to spell a message.


stone tape theory

the stone tape theory (plural stone tape theories)

the stone tape theory (canonical)
stone tape theories (plural)

The idea that ghosts and hauntings are analogous to tape recordings, and that electrical mental impressions released during emotional or traumatic events can somehow be "stored" in stone and other materials and "replayed" under certain conditions.


ignatia

(homeopathy) A homeopathic remedy made from the plant Strychnos ignatii.


archaeoacoustics

The theory that patterns on ancient artifacts encode the sounds produced while they were being created, now considered a pseudoscience.


bioresonance

electromagnetic wave
electromagnetic wave

A pseudoscientific medical practice that purports to diagnose and treat illness using electromagnetic waves.


racial science

racial science (countable and uncountable, plural racial sciences)

Misinformation presented scientifically that establishes inherent inferiorities between entire races.


protochronism

The pseudoscientific idea that Latin (or other languages) are descended from Romanian as opposed to vice versa.


psychic surgery

psychic surgery (countable and uncountable, plural psychic surgeries)

A medical fraud in which a practitioner creates the illusion of performing surgery with his/her bare hands, using fake blood and other trickery.


Wernicke's command

Wernicke's command (plural Wernicke's commands)

(Synergistic Kinesiology) A negative, suppressive command knowingly or unknowingly installed by a second person in the right Wernicke's area of a person's brain. It is worded from the point of view of the second person, who originally said it.


axiatonal

Here the breathing technique works with specific rhythms of nature, on expansion and contraction of this axiatonal line.

2005, Michael Arluck Scheinbaum, David Getoff, Reduce Blood Pressure Naturally:

Adjusting the axiatonal lines and their associated spin points has the capability to restore all aspects of self, when perceived or proven to be out of balance or less than whole.

2010, Robert E. Pettit, Wake Up for Ascension to a New Earth - or Leave, page 260:

Of or relating to an alternative therapy that attempts to align energies in the body with a cosmic grid of energy.


Purification Rundown

Purification Rundown (plural Purification Rundowns)

(Scientology) A detoxification program used by the Church of Scientology, involving exercise, vitamins, and long periods in a sauna, and supposed to treat long-term effects of drug abuse or exposure to toxins.


Omphalos hypothesis

Named after the 1857 book Omphalos by Philip Henry Gosse, in which it was argued that, in order for the world to be "functional", God must have created the Earth with mountains, canyons, trees, etc. The word Omphalos comes from Ancient Greek ὀμφαλός (omphalós, “navel”), an example of one such feature putatively needed for completion.

uder

(creationism) The proposition that God created the universe within the past few thousands of years but also introduced false evidence that the universe is of great age.


hollow earther

2001, F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre, Macintyre's Improbable Bestiary, Wildside Press, 24.
Beware the Hollow-Earther! Beware the troglodytes / They make their homes in catacombs, and prowl on moonless nights . . .

Someone who believes the Earth is hollow.


tulpamancy

(neologism) The culture and practice of talking to tulpas (autonomous thoughtforms).


tulpamancer

They also felt the tulpamancer's belief in them helped them grow quickly.

2015, Emily Steinbach, The Tulpamancer's Toolbox: 50 Practical Tips For Tulpa Creation Success!:

(neologism) One who practices tulpamancy; a person talking to tulpas (autonomous thoughtforms).


healing crisis

(alternative medicine) An acute worsening of health during the process of healing, brought about by the elimination of toxins from the body.


apobaramin

From apo- + baramin, coined by American creationist Walter ReMine in 1993.

coin

(creationism) A group of similar holobaramins.


holobaramin

From holo- + baramin, coined by American creationist Walter ReMine in 1993.

(creationism) A grouping of all organisms believed to be genetically related to each other in baraminology.


monobaramin

From mono- + baramin, coined by American creationist Walter ReMine in 1993.

(creationism) Part or all of a holobaramin; a group of organisms believed to be related to by common descent in baraminology.


polybaramin

From poly- + baramin, coined by American creationist Walter ReMine in 1993.

(creationism) A grouping of organisms that belong to different holobaramins.


race realism

scientific racism
scientific racism#English

(euphemistic) Synonym of scientific racism.


pseudoarchaeologist

The Ahnerebe were pseudoarchaeologists, completely unconcerned with empirical rigour, reason or methodology and wholly committed to the quest for confirmation bias.

2021, Otto English, Fake History, page 46:

Someone who practices pseudoarchaeology.


broscience

Broscience is the predominant brand of reasoning used by amateur bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts where the anecdotal stories of people who really have no idea what's going on inside their bodies takes precedence over credible scientific research.

2012, Michael Matthews, 12 Health & Fitness Mistakes You Don't Know You're Making, Oculus Publishers, →ISBN:

This brings us to more work by Dr. Leidy, who put this meal frequency/satiety broscience to the test to see if eating more actually does make you less hungry during the day.

2017, Michael Roussell, The MetaShred Diet: Your 28-Day Rapid Fat-Loss Plan, Rodale Books, →ISBN:

(slang) Any pseudoscientific claim on behalf of fitness goals derived from bodybuilding experience.


flood geology

(pseudoscience) The attempt to interpret and reconcile geological features of the Earth in accordance with a literal belief in the global flood described in Genesis.


Radithor

(historical) A quack medicine consisting of distilled water and radium, claimed to cure impotence and other conditions, but actually causing radiation poisoning.


elementology

An approach to medicine based on the ancient elements of air, earth, fire, and water.


clean eating

The practice of eating whole foods in their most natural state and avoiding processed foods such as refined sugar to obtain supposed health benefits.


thought wave

A supposed undulatory movement in a hypothetical medium by which thoughts are transferred in telepathy.


Gerson therapy

Named after the inventor, Max Gerson (1881–1959).

A pseudoscientific treatment that aims to cure various conditions, such as headaches, tuberculosis, and cancer, by means of a special diet.


pseudonutrition

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-pseudonutrition.wav


perturbatory

(obsolete) The supposed power of deflecting the divining rod by magnetic influence.


en-noun

eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (uncountable)

post-traumatic stress disorder
post-traumatic stress disorder

A form of psychotherapy for the relief of post-traumatic stress disorder.

intégration neuro-émotionnelle par les mouvements oculaires

Desensibilisierung und Aufarbeitung durch Augenbewegungen

desensibilizzazione e rielaborazione attraverso i movimenti oculari

眼球運動による脱感作および再処理法

がんきゅううんどうによるだつかんつくおよびさいしょりほう

gankyū undōniyoru datsukan tsukuoyobi saishorihō

حساسیتزدایی از طریق حرکت چشم و پردازش مجدد

dessensibilização e reprocessamento por movimentos oculares

desensibilizacija i pererabotka dviženijem glaz

десенсибилизация и переработка движением глаз

desensibilización y reprocesamiento por movimientos oculares

göz hareketleriyle duyarsızlaştırma ve yeniden işleme


record keeper

From record + keeper. In the crystal sense, coined by Katrina Raphaell.

A kind of trigonic quartz crystal, supposed to provide mystical insights into the future.