ritual
Americannoun
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rituals
plural
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an established or prescribed procedure for a religious or other rite.
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a system or collection of religious or other rites.
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observance of set forms in public worship.
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a book of rites or ceremonies.
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a book containing the offices to be used by priests in administering the sacraments and for visitation of the sick, burial of the dead, etc.
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a prescribed or established rite, ceremony, proceeding, or service.
the ritual of the dead.
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prescribed, established, or ceremonial acts or features collectively, as in religious services.
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any practice or pattern of behavior regularly performed in a set manner.
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a prescribed code of behavior regulating social conduct, as that exemplified by the raising of one's hat or the shaking of hands in greeting.
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Psychiatry. a specific act, as hand-washing, performed repetitively to a pathological degree, occurring as a common symptom of obsessive-compulsive neurosis.
adjective
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of the nature of or practiced as a rite or ritual.
a ritual dance.
- Synonyms:
- sacramental, formal, ceremonial
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of or relating to rites or ritual.
ritual laws.
noun
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the prescribed or established form of a religious or other ceremony
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such prescribed forms in general or collectively
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stereotyped activity or behaviour
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psychol any repetitive behaviour, such as hand-washing, performed by a person with a compulsive personality disorder
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any formal act, institution, or procedure that is followed consistently
the ritual of the law
adjective
Synonym Usage
See ceremony.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of ritual
First recorded in 1560–70; from Latin rītuālis, from rītu(s) rite + -ālis -al 1
Explanation
A ritual is a ceremony or action performed in a customary way. Your family might have a Saturday night ritual of eating a big spaghetti dinner and then taking a long walk to the ice cream shop. As an adjective, ritual means "conforming to religious rites," which are the sacred, customary ways of celebrating a religion or culture. Different communities have different ritual practices, like meditation in Buddhism, or baptism in Christianity. We also call the ceremony itself a ritual. Although it comes from religious ceremonies, ritual can also be used for any time-honored tradition, like the Superbowl, or Mardi Gras, or Sunday morning pancake breakfast.
Vocabulary lists containing ritual
A Long Walk to Water
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The Diary of Anne Frank
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It's Lit: Hanukkah Words
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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:
"It could also reflect a further change in ritual practice, with an animal taking on the role of a psychopomp, a symbolic helper in the journey to the afterlife," added Molinero Polo.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 19, 2026
This looked like a humiliation ritual to me: Crowley wasn’t polling competitively even when he was actively campaigning, and it seemed unlikely that his brand could be rehabilitated with such little time left.
From Slate ● Aug. 17, 2026
On top of that, the cultural obsession with efficiency doesn’t align with a diet that views cooking as a nourishing daily ritual.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 16, 2026
"It was actually quite an interesting time to be there, and realising how important religion is to the people of Morocco and how seriously they take the fasting ritual," Smith said.
From BBC ● Aug. 14, 2026
Still, she admired the ritual, envying the Levys the pleasure they took in one another’s company, wishing her cousins lived nearby so she could have an orchestra of her own.
From "In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson" by Bette Bao Lord
Cage plays Roy, a gifted con artist with obsessive-compulsive disorder whose tics, phobias and elaborate rituals have turned his immaculate home into a fortress against the world.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 20, 2026
The blur outside becomes enveloping and unfathomable; the universe inside the car evolves as the friends invent tension-defusing rituals to keep from screaming at one another.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 19, 2026
As indigenous people have often taught us, culture is not merely human but a matter of shared environments, rituals, observations and respect.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026
He made people fall in love with food, its rituals and its culture.
From Salon ● Aug. 12, 2026
But I know that I have always felt great distance from the grieving rituals of my people, and I must have felt it powerfully then.
From "Between the World and Me" by Ta-Nehisi Coates
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.
