recessional

[ ri-sesh-uh-nl ]

adjective
  1. of or relating to a recession of the clergy and choir after the service.

  2. of or relating to a recess, as of a legislative body.

noun
  1. a hymn or other piece of music played at the end of a service while the congregation is filing out.

Origin of recessional

1
First recorded in 1865–70; recession1 + -al1

Words Nearby recessional

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use recessional in a sentence

  • The very next year The recessional stirred the religious consciousness of the whole English-speaking race.

    Essays on Modern Novelists | William Lyon Phelps
  • A backward glance now and then showed that she was not watching the recessional as closely as she was listening to him.

    Mary Ware in Texas | Annie F. Johnston
  • In the meantime, the recessional frenzy extended all over the State, and every bank was obliged to close its doors.

  • Both literatures have the sanctuary hymn, and the processional and the recessional hymn.

  • Surely nothing could be more appropriate for Americans to sing at the present time than the recessional.

British Dictionary definitions for recessional

recessional

/ (rɪˈsɛʃənəl) /


adjective
  1. of or relating to recession

noun
  1. a hymn sung as the clergy and choir withdraw from the chancel at the conclusion of a church service

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