phrenology
/frənˈɑlədʒi/ noun
Forms phrenologies
- noun (medicine, biology, historical) The pseudoscience which studies the relationships between a person's character and the morphology (structure) of the skull. “Phrenology involves feeling the bumps in the skull to determine an individual's psychological attributes.”
Synonyms
Etymology
Gr. -logy: cf. F. phrénologie.
Webster’s 1913
- noun The science of the special functions of the several parts of the brain, or of the supposed connection between the various faculties of the mind and particular organs in the brain.
- noun In popular usage, the physiological hypothesis of Gall, that the mental faculties, and traits of character, are shown on the surface of the head or skull; craniology.
Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “phrenology”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details