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book of hours

American  
Or Book of Hours

noun

  1. a book containing the prescribed order of prayers, readings from Scripture, and rites for the canonical hours.


book of hours British  

noun

  1. (often capitals) a book used esp in monasteries during the Middle Ages that contained the prayers and offices of the canonical hours

"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

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See Examples For:

Reached at her Dallas home, she said a dealer asked if she wanted to hold a book of hours — an illuminated manuscript used to help laypeople pray — in her hands.

From New York Times Feb. 29, 2024

As she tells it, Marguerite Steed Hoffman fell for a medieval book of hours at once, at the 2010 European Fine Arts Fair in Maastricht, the Netherlands.

From New York Times Feb. 29, 2024

Step inside the world’s most beautiful calendar, as Jason Farago, a critic for The Times, guides you through an invaluable 15th-century book of hours, in which science, religion and art coalesce.

From New York Times Apr. 17, 2023

Lazy, hazy days of summer-when the sun caressed the contours of a kitchen table, or of his basset hounds, or of his wife-provided Bonnard's book of hours.

From Time Magazine Archive

And so, a few years earlier, possessing the pamphlet and knowing the hiding-place in which Marie Antoinette had concealed the document, Arsene Lupin had ended by laying his hand on the famous book of hours.

From The Hollow Needle; Further adventures of Arsene Lupin by Teixeira de Mattos, Alexander

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