augur

\ \ [14] In Roman times, an augur was someone who foretold the future by observing the flight of birds (or by examining their entrails). His method of divination was reflected in his title, for the Latin word augur, earlier auger, seems to have meant literally ‘one who performs with birds’, from avis ‘bird’ (as in English aviary [16] and aviation [19]) and gerere ‘do, perform’ (as in English gestation, gesture, gerund, digest, and suggest). (A parallel formation is auspice [16], whose Latin antecedent auspex meant ‘one who observed the flight of birds’; it was compounded from avis and the verb specere ‘look’, which is related to English species and spy.) A Latin derivative was the verb inaugurāre ‘foretell the future from the flight of birds’, which was applied to the installation of someone of office after the appropriate omens had been determined; by the time it reached English as inaugurate [17], the association with divination had been left far behind.

\ \ Cf.⇒ AVIARY, AVIATION, INAUGURATE