breviary
Americannoun
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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
Study the World Almanac: it is to be your breviary for a while .
From Time Magazine Archive
After that he exercises by walking along the Apostolic Palace's rooftop terrace while reciting the rosary and reading his breviary.
From Time Magazine Archive
At 1 he lunches in his upstairs apartment, at 1:30 he reads his breviary.
From Time Magazine Archive
Then, breviary in hand, one of the female teachers led us in singing hymns and reciting psalms.
From "Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography" by Mark Mathabane
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
Her costly breviaries, embellished with strange illuminations, are prohibited under Lord Campbell’s Act.
From Masques & Phases by Ross, Robert
They had "eggs, bread, wine from the king's cellar, their breviaries, their night-gowns, a palliasse, and a mattress," brought to them there; and they were kept under ocular supervision for four and twenty hours.
From A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 4 by Black, Robert
I should guess that Porteous was the sign used by some medieval writer of mass-books and breviaries.
From The Romance of Names by Weekley, Ernest
Besides many missals, breviaries, lives and legends of the Saints, 'Books of Hours,' and other religious works.
From The First Governess of the Netherlands, Margaret of Austria by Tremayne, Eleanor E.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
