Onychomancy or variously onuchomancy, onychomantia, onycomancy, onymancy (from Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 onychos, 'fingernail', and manteia, 'fortune-telling

Fortune-telling

Fortune-telling is the practice of predicting information about a person's life. The scope of fortune-telling is in principle identical with the practice of divination...

') is an ancient form of divination

Divination

Divination is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic standardized process or ritual...

 using fingernails. It consists of watching the reflection of sunlight

Sunlight

Sunlight, in the broad sense, is the total frequency spectrum of electromagnetic radiation given off by the Sun. On Earth, sunlight is filtered through the Earth's atmosphere, and solar radiation is obvious as daylight when the Sun is above the horizon.When the direct solar radiation is not blocked...

 on the oiled fingernails of an unpolluted boy, then interpreting the symbols that appear.

The fingers where symbols appear allegedly indicate the nature of the coming events, while the location of the symbols on the nail allow to date them. The higher the symbol is situated on the nail, the nearer the events are in the future.

The term is also used for a method of chiromancy

Chiromancy

Palmistry or chiromancy , is the art of characterization and foretelling the future through the study of the palm, also known as palm reading, or chirology. The practice is found all over the world, with numerous cultural variations...

, consisting of reading health & character from fingernails.