sortilege

From Old French sortilège, from Medieval Latin sortilegium (“witchcraft”), from Latin sortilegus (“sorcerer, diviner”), from sors (“fate”) + legere (“choose”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈsɔːtɪlɪd͡ʒ/

sortilege (countable and uncountable, plural sortileges)

1. Witchcraft, magic, especially as a means of making decisions or predictions.
   • 1819, Walter Scott, Ivanhoe:

     We have therefore summoned to our presence a Jewish woman, by name Rebecca, daughter of Isaac of York — a woman infamous for sortileges and for witcheries.

   • 1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society, published 2012, page 115:

     Orthodox believers […] were less happy about using sortilege to coerce God into taking decisions on their behalf.

   • 2001, JT Leroy, Sarah:

     ‘Too much evil sortilege,’ Glad always says when someone suggests he open a franchise over Cheat Ridge.

   • 2014, AnneMarie Luijendijk, “Introduction”, in Forbidden Oracles? The Gospel of the Lots of Mary (Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum / Studies and Texts in Antiquity and Christianity; 89)‎, Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebek, →ISBN, page 1:

     People who faced difficult decisions or needed insight into the future would consult a diviner, who performed a ritual to locate an oracle in the codex and then interpreted the divinatory text. In Egypt and the wider Mediterranean world, this practice - sortilege - was both common and controversial.

• sortilegious

sortilege

1. vocative masculine singular of sortilegus