World Wide Words: Omphaloskepsis

OMPHALOSKEPSIS/ˈɒmfələʊˌskɛpsɪs/

Contemplating one’s navel as an aid to meditation.

This word seems to be relatively new, at least the Merriam-Webster “Word of the Day” column claims it to have been invented only in the 1920s. It turns up in only a few dictionaries and seems to be a word that survives more for the chance to show off one’s erudition than as a real aid to communication. If so, this article is a further perpetuation of its unreal status. It is formed from two Greek words, omphalos, “navel, boss, hub”, and skepsis, “the act of looking; enquiry”. The former turns up in words such as omphalotomy, “cutting of the umbilical cord”, in the related omphalopsychic for one of a group of mystics who practised gazing at the navel as a means of inducing hypnotic reverie, and omphalomancy, an ancient form of divination in which the number of children a woman would bear was determined from counting the knots in her umbilical cord at birth.