1. Plural of phrenology; systems or practices based on the belief that mental faculties and character traits can be determined by the shape and size of the skull.
Usage: historical; pseudoscience; now discredited

Examples

• Nineteenth-century phrenologies claimed to map personality traits onto specific regions of the brain.
• The museum's collection includes casts and instruments used in various phrenologies of the Victorian era.
• Modern neuroscience has thoroughly rejected the phrenologies that were popular in the 1800s.
• Different phrenologies proposed competing theories about which skull features indicated intelligence or criminality.
• Scholars study historical phrenologies as examples of how pseudoscience can gain widespread acceptance.