About Quiet Augury
Words that speak when you listen.
What is Quiet Augury?
Over fifty years ago, Thomas J. Davis - Tom - created a word oracle. He believed that if you sit with what weighs on your mind and listen, the right words will find you. Not fortune-telling. Not prediction. Just stillness, attention, and the quiet power of language.
An augury is the ancient practice of reading signs - Roman priests once watched the flight of birds to seek meaning. Tom built a quieter kind: one that listens to your words and offers words in return. The formula is faithful to the original. What once ran on a GW-BASIC program now runs on the web, but the spirit is unchanged.
How does it work?
You write what is on your mind - a thought, a feeling, a wandering sentence. The oracle listens, then reaches into the language and draws words back to you, each with its meaning. Whether you find something profound or simply discover a word you have never encountered, you leave with something.
The oracle does not give the same answer twice. It listens each time as if for the first time.
The spirit behind it
Tom loved the word Ahimsa - a Sanskrit word meaning non-violence, peace, and compassion. That spirit lives in this project. Quiet Augury is not loud. It is not trying to impress. It is a quiet place where words meet whatever you bring to them.
Who is this for?
Anyone who listens. If you believe words carry meaning beyond their definitions, the oracle is here. If you simply want to learn new words, it works for that too. There is no wrong way to listen.
Your privacy
Quiet Augury respects your privacy. Guest queries are anonymous - we hash your IP address for rate limiting but never store it. Registered users can view their own reading history, but readings are private by default. Shared readings use unguessable tokens and never reveal who created them. Read our Privacy Policy for full details.