little hours

American  

plural noun

Roman Catholic Church.

1. the hours of prime, tierce, sext, and nones, and sometimes also vespers and compline.

---

little hours British  

plural noun

1. RC Church the canonical hours of prime, terce, sext, and nones in the divine office

---

Etymology

Origin of little hours

First recorded in 1870–75

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

little hours

At what time should the little hours be said?

From The Divine Office by Quigley, Edward J.

How she cheats their little hours of temptation, and tides them over the rough places that her eye sees lying like sunken rocks before her little ship! 

From Bunyan Characters (1st Series) by Whyte, Alexander

The night has reached the dreariest of her little hours, that one that seems equally remote from the comfortable shores of the gone day and the coming one.

From Doctor Cupid by Broughton, Rhoda

They had been so brave in the morning, so strong; but in the evening, a few little hours, they were dead, and we had not hated them, nor they us.

From Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) Letters from the Front by Hales, A. G. (Alfred Greenwood)

I went along swimmingly into the little hours, but by two o'clock there was a great sameness about it, and I grew desperately sleepy.

From Gala-days by Hamilton, Gail