breviary
Americannoun
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breviaries
plural
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Roman Catholic Church. a book containing all the daily psalms, hymns, prayers, lessons, etc., necessary for reciting the office.
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a book of daily prayers and readings in some other churches.
noun
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RC Church a book of psalms, hymns, prayers, etc, to be recited daily by clerics in major orders and certain members of religious orders as part of the divine office
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a similar book in the Orthodox Church
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of breviary
First recorded in 1540–50, breviary is from the Latin word breviārium an abridgment. See brevi-, -ary
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.
See Examples For:
He had a worn leather breviary stuffed with prayers and Mass cards he’d been collecting for years, and he read through them all at the dining-room table every night during the 11 o’clock news.
From New York Times ● May 26, 2020
I received no mail, read no newspapers and no books except my breviary and my Bible .
From Time Magazine Archive
At 1 he lunches in his upstairs apartment, at 1:30 he reads his breviary.
From Time Magazine Archive
Before the afternoon's voting, Cardinal Pacelli calmly paced a corridor, reading his breviary.
From Time Magazine Archive
It might be feat a service is finishing, for light comes from fee doorway behind her, an organ is playing inside, and fee lady is holding a jeweled breviary.
From "The Golden Compass" by Philip Pullman
Moreover, the widespread liturgical experimentation encouraged by Vatican II seriously undermined a profitable "black book" trade in breviaries, missals and hymnals.
From Time Magazine Archive
His hood was almost taken to pieces, thread by thread, by French ecclesiastics who were close behind his Holiness, and who deposited the fragments, as precious relics, in their breviaries.
From Pius IX. And His Time by Æneas MacDonell Dawson
It is divided into nine lessons and served for the Franciscan breviaries up to the time when St. Bonaventura made his Legenda Minor.
From Life of St. Francis of Assisi by Louise Seymour Houghton
Breadfruit-, mango- and orange-trees grew in the tangled tall grass, and the garden where the priests had read their breviaries was a wilderness of tiger-lilies.
From White Shadows in the South Seas by Frederick O'Brien
I should guess that Porteous was the sign used by some medieval writer of mass-books and breviaries.
From The Romance of Names by Ernest Weekley
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