Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Dowsing |
DowsingNoun1. Searching for underground water or minerals by using a dowsing rod. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
| Domain | Definition |
Geography | The mystic art of using the so-called divining rod for the location of ground water. Source: European Union. (references) |
Mining | The practice of locating ground water, mineral deposits, or other objects by means of a divining rod or a pendulum. A dowser may claim also to be able to diagnose diseases, determine the sex of unborn babies, etc.Syn:dousing; water witching. CF:rhabdomancy. (references) |
Public Administration | To use a divining rod to locate water, minerals, etc. Source: European Union. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Dowsing is a controversial method of divination used to find water, metals and hidden objects by carrying some form of stick and watching its motion.
Dowsing can be done with a forked branch of a tree, bent pieces of metal or plastic wire, or a small pendulum. Some people use no pointing device at all.
Dowsing has existed in various forms for thousands of years. The form used today probably originates in Germany during the 15th century. Then it was used to find metals. The technique spread to England with German miners who came to England to work in the coal mines. An extensive book on the history of dowsing was published by Christopher Bird in 1979 under the title of The Divining Hand.
Dowsing is often explained as being due to the human body having a sensitivity to electric or magnetic fields (the senses of electroception and magnetoception), though these effects are so far still unverified.
A skeptical theory of dowsing is that the seemingly involuntary movements of the piece of metal or wood are due to the idiomotor reaction. In other words, the dowser inadvertently creates such movements him/herself. James Randi is one proponent of this theory. Dowsing is the most common claim to Randi's offer of one million dollars for the demonstration of something paranormal, but as of 2003, all attempts to demonstrate dowsing to Randi's exacting scientific standards have failed.
Dowsing is in the borderland between pseudoscience and protoscience.
Most dowsers use a simple brass rod bent in an "L" shape. The choice of brass apparently allows the rod to attune to the magnetic fields emenated by the target without the earth's EM field interfering, as would be the case with a metal such as steel. The end of the rod to be held by the dowser is often encased in a material that provides a constant electrical impedence, to prevent the dowser's own conductivity from interfering with the dowsing process.
Some such rods also utilize a "witness chamber", especially those claimed to be able to find minerals. The user places a sample of what he or she wishes to find in the witness chamber, usually located at the end of the rod, and the rod is supposed to only respond to the material placed in the chamber.
In recent years, electronic dowsing rods, also known as Long-Range Locators have sprung up on the market, often costing hundreds or even thousands of dollars. The makers claim that these devices have specially tuned electronics that allow one to find anything from water to gold. In every known case, however, it has been found that the locator electronics are either totally nonfunctional or do not perform as claimed when tested under rigorous scientific conditions, such as a double-blind study
Some proponents claim to be able to find water or minerals by dowsing a map. Unlike dowsing by walking, this method is unsupported by any scientific hypothesis, proven or unproven, which lead most to classify it as pseudoscience. Unlike ordinary dowsing it can only be explained as some kind of extra-sensory perception.
History of Dowsing
Theories of Dowsing
Dowsing Equipment
Map Dowsing
External Links
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Dowsing."
Synonyms: DowsingSynonyms: dowse (n), rhabdomancy (n). (additional references) |
Crosswords: Dowsing |
| English words defined with "dowsing": dowse ♦ rhabdomancy. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "dowsing": Radiesthesia. (references) |
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Theater & Movies | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Human Rights | Congo | In November according to a police representative interviewed by the press, the police had been called to a local department store a few days prior to the interview because citizens had tied up a thief and were dowsing him with hot or boiling water. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Dowsing" is generally used as a lexical verb (-ing form) -- approximately 58.82% of the time. "Dowsing" is used about 34 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Lexical Verb (-ing form) | 58.82% | 20 | 78,262 |
| Noun (proper) | 35.29% | 12 | 101,599 |
| Noun (singular) | 5.88% | 2 | 245,945 |
| Total | 100.00% | 34 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expressions using "dowsing": Advanced dowsing ♦ dowsing rod. Additional references. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
dowsing | 149 |
dowsing rod | 35 |
pendulum dowsing | 29 |
dowsing for water | 10 |
dowsing healing in international russia | 6 |
divination dowsing rod | 5 |
dowsing grave | 5 |
dowsing make rod | 4 |
dowsing chart | 4 |
dowsing healing in russia | 3 |
map dowsing | 3 |
dowsing ghost | 2 |
dowsing kit | 2 |
american dowsing society | 2 |
dowsing health | 2 |
dowsing magick | 2 |
treasure dowsing | 2 |
crystal dowsing | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "dowsing"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dutch | wichelroeden (divining, water witching). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Finnish | pohjaveden etsintä varvun avulla (divining, water witching). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
French | sourcellerie, rhabdomancie, radiesthésie, rabdomancie. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
German | Rutengehen (divining, water witching). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Greek | ραβδοσκοπία (divining, water witching). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Italian | rabdomanzia (rhabdomancy). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Kanji | 水脈 い (water divining). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Katakana | すいみゃくうらない (water divining). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Manx | slat chouyllagh (dowsing rod). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pig Latin | owsingday radiestesia (divining, water witching). (various references) radiestesia (divining, water witching). (various references) slagrutegång (divining, water witching). (various references) maden arama çubuğu (dipping rod, dowsing rod, twig), çatal biçiminde çubuk (dowsing rod). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Misspellings | |
"Dowsing" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Doessing, dorsing, dosings, dossing, dowdings, downsian, dowsin, dowsons, Duesing, owsin, towsing. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "dowsing" (pronounced dou"sing) |
| 5 | d ou" s i ng | dousing. |
| 4 | -ou" s i ng | grousing. |
| 3 | -s i ng | accessing, acquiescing, addressing, advancing, affixing, amassing, annexing, announcing, assessing, balancing, basing, blessing, bouncing, boxing, bracing, busing, bussing, buttressing, bypassing, canvassing, caressing, casing, ceasing, chasing, classing, coalescing, coaxing, coercing, collapsing, commencing, compressing, condensing, conferencing, confessing, conversing, convincing, coursing, crisscrossing, crossing, cursing, cussing, dancing, debasing, decreasing, defacing, denouncing, depressing, diagnosing, digressing, disbursing, discussing, dismissing, dispensing, dispersing, displacing, distancing, distressing, divorcing, dosing, dressing, eclipsing, effacing, embarrassing, embracing, encompassing, endorsing, enforcing, engrossing, enhancing, enticing, erasing, expensing, experiencing, expressing, facing, faxing, fencing, financing, fixing, flexing, focusing, forcing, freelancing, fundraising, fussing, gassing, glancing, greasing, grimacing, grossing, guessing, hairdressing, harassing, harnessing, hissing, horsing, icing, impressing, increasing, indexing, inducing, influencing, intermixing, introducing, invoicing, kissing, Lancing, lapsing, leasing, lensing, licensing, loosing, massing, menacing, mensing, messing, mincing, missing, mixing, noticing, nursing, obsessing, oppressing, outdistancing, outpacing, outsourcing, overproducing, pacing, parsing, passing, perplexing, piecing, piercing, placing, policing, possessing, pouncing, practicing, prancing, prejudicing, pressing, pricing, processing, producing, professing, progressing, promising, pronouncing, pulsing, racing, reassessing, rebalancing, recessing, redressing, reducing, referencing, refinancing, refocusing, rehearsing, reimbursing, reinforcing, reintroducing, rejoicing, relapsing, relaxing, releasing, reminiscing, renouncing, replacing, repressing, repricing, reprocessing, reproducing, repulsing, repurchasing, resurfacing, retracing, reversing, rinsing, romancing, sacrificing, seducing, sensing, sentencing, sequencing, servicing, showcasing, silencing, slicing, sluicing, sourcing, spacing, spicing, splicing, sprucing, stressing, subleasing, suppressing, surfacing, surpassing, taxing, teleconferencing, tossing, tracing, traipsing, traversing, trespassing, trouncing, unceasing, unconvincing, underpricing, unpromising, vexing, videoconferencing, voicing, waltzing, waxing, wincing, wissing, witnessing, xeroxing. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "d-g-i-n-o-s-w" | |
-1 letter: disown, doings, dosing, dowing, indows, sowing. | |
-2 letters: dingo, dings, doing, dongs, downs, gowds, gowns, indow, owing, swing, winds, wings, winos. | |
-3 letters: digs, ding, dins, dogs, dong, dons, down, dows, gids, gins, gods, gowd, gown, ions, nodi, nods, nogs, nows, owns, sign, sing, snog, snow, song, sown, swig, wigs, wind, wing, wino, wins, wogs. | |
| Words containing the letters "d-g-i-n-o-s-w" | |
+1 letter: drowsing, wendigos, widgeons, windigos, wordings. | |
+2 letters: disowning, downswing, drownings, kingwoods, shadowing, swounding, wendigoes, windigoes. | |
+3 letters: bringdowns, disavowing, downsizing, downswings, miswording, scowdering, springwood, worldlings. | |
+4 letters: beshadowing, disallowing, disboweling, discrowning, disendowing, downscaling, landownings, springwoods, wrongdoings. | |
+5 letters: bowdlerising, disbowelling, downshifting, misknowledge, shadowboxing, snowboarding, wildfowlings, woodcarvings, woodcuttings, woodshedding, woodworkings. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)44 6F 77 73 69 6E 67 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
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| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
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| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
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Morse Code (1836) (references)-.. --- .--. ... .. -. --. |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01000100 01101111 01110111 01110011 01101001 01101110 01100111 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)D o w s i n g |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0044 006F 0077 0073 0069 006E 0067 |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
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Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)38818985758073 |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Slideshow 6. Quotations: Non-fiction 7. Usage Frequency 8. Expressions | 9. Expressions: Internet 10. Translations: Modern 11. Derivations 12. Rhymes | 13. Anagrams 14. Orthography 15. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
