processional
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Forms: form: processionals
Etymology: From procession + -al.
Senses: examples: text: A perfectly drilled wedding procession, like a military one, should move forward in perfect step, rising and falling in a block or unit. To secure perfection of detail, the bars of the processional may be counted so that the music comes to an end at precisely the moment the bride and groom stand side by side at the chancel steps.
ref: 1922, Emily Post, chapter 21, in Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home, New York: Funk & Wagnalls, published 1923, pages 338–9:
text: […] a rainy Palm Sunday. […] At Grace Church on-the-Hill, the children and the acolytes stood huddled in the narthex; holding their palm fronds, they resembled tourists who’d landed in the tropics on an unseasonably cold day. The organist chose Brahms for the processional—“O Welt ich muss dich lassen”; “O world I must leave you.”
ref: 1989, John Irving, chapter 6, in A Prayer for Owen Meaney, Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, page 250:
glosses: A hymn or other music used during a procession; prosodion.
examples: text: He saw the processional of world brotherhood tramp steadily through the paling sunset; saffron-vestured Mandarin marching by flax-faced Norseman and languid South Sea Islander—the diverse peoples toward whom he had always yearned.
ref: 1914, Sinclair Lewis, chapter 3, in Our Mr. Wrenn, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, page 46:
text: And Eugene watched the slow fusion of the seasons; he saw the royal processional of the months; he saw the summer light eat like a river into dark; he saw dark triumph once again; and he saw the minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death.
ref: 1929, Thomas Wolfe, chapter 22, in Look Homeward, Angel, New York: Modern Library, page 300:
text: At the Wusdatts’ once, the two had marched in the processional to the buffet table with their small fingers linked […]
ref: 1973, Peter De Vries, chapter 6, in Forever Panting,, Boston: Little, Brown, page 111:
text: […] they heard the voices of living men shouting, finally. And the lowing of cattle. And the creaking of wheels. But they saw nothing. The symphonious clamor was everywhere, filling the sky […], it was the great processional of the Union armies, but of no more substance than an army of ghosts.
ref: 2005, E. L. Doctorow, The March, New York: Random House, Chapter , pp. 9-10:
synonyms: procession
glosses: A group of people or things moving along in an orderly, stately, or solemn manner.
examples: text: [47] Item that the Churchwardens of euery paryshe shall delyuer vnto our visitours the inuentories of vestmentes, copes, and other ornamentes, plate, bookes, and specyallye of Grayles, Couchers, Legendes, Processionalles, Hymnalles, Manuelles, Portuesses, and suche lyke apperteynyng to theyr Church.
ref: 1559, Iniunctions geven by the Quenes Maiestie anno Domini MD.LIX, the fyrst yeare of the raigne of our Soueraigne Lady Quene Elizabeth, London:
text: c. 1640s, John Gregory, “Episcopus Puerorum In Die Innocentium: Or, A Discovery of an Ancient Custom in the Church of Sarum, making an Anniversary Bishop among the Choristers” in The Works of the Reverend and Learned Mr. John Gregory, London: R. Royston and T. Williams, 1671, p. 114,
By the Use of Sarum (for ’tis almost the only place where I can hear any thing of this; that of York in their Processional seems to take no notice of it) upon the Eve to Innocents Day the Chorister-Bishop was to go in solemn Procession with his fellows […]
topics: Catholicism
Christianity
Roman-Catholicism
glosses: A service book relating to ecclesiastical processions.
Coordinate terms: recessional
Derived terms: processionalist