Hail Mary
11
7.7
- noun
- /heɪl ˈmɛri/
:
Ave María
- Hail Mary, full of grace!
- say a Hail Mary
So the Hail Mary is a kind of prayer, but that's different from the Our Father.
- So the Hail Mary is a kind of prayer, but that's different from the Our Father.
Examples
-
Father Broussard told me to say ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys for my penance.
Fiction book (1998) -
Pray just one Hail Mary at the dinner table after you've prayed your Grace Before Meals prayer.
Blog text (6) -
I said the Hail Mary.
-
I'll say a Hail Mary....
Academic text (1991) -
- Hail Mary, full of grace, the lord is with thee.
-
Hail Mary, full of grace.
-
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
-
Hail Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
-
The first poems I ever memorized were the prayers my mother taught me: the Lord's Prayer, the Hail Mary.
Academic text (2009) -
Before the wedding, she prayed the Hail Mary for good fortune.
Synonyms
2
7.4
A prayer to the Virgin Mary often sung during church services
Surface Forms
Morphology
hail + Mary
The idiomatic sense 'a final, desperate attempt' comes from the Catholic prayer and metaphorical use in contexts like football; knowing 'hail' (greet/praise) and 'Mary' (a proper name) does not let a B1 learner deduce this meaning. The sense is culturally and idiomatically conditioned rather than compositionally derived, so it is not predictable from the constituents.
Etymology
Hail Mary is the name of the traditional Catholic prayer to the Virgin Mary that people say when they want help. So it simply means 'a prayer to the Virgin Mary'.