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table-rapping

British  

noun

  1. the sounds of knocking or tapping made without any apparent physical agency while a group of people sit round a table, and attributed by spiritualists to the spirit of a dead person using this as a means of communication with the living

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Sometimes he tells stories that end with persuasive, table-rapping declarations.

From Washington Post

When Shaw replied: "I gave up table-rapping in my childhood," Swaffer wrote back: "I thought that now you are in your second childhood, you might want to give it another go."

From Time Magazine Archive

As a thinker Yeats had his crotchets, including a belief in ghosts, fairies, and table-rapping, but his holy trinity was Ireland, beauty and poetry, and no priest ever served his faith better.

From Time Magazine Archive

The bridegroom plays dead on his wedding night, while the bride repents the cruelty that supposedly made him commit suicide and the in-laws communicate through spiritualistic medium with his table-rapping soul.

From Time Magazine Archive

The following are specimens of these table-rapping communications.

From Mysterious Psychic Forces An Account of the Author's Investigations in Psychical Research, Together with Those of Other European Savants by Flammarion, Camille