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Glite Dictionary
canonical hour

canonical hour

9.9
One of seven fixed times for prayer during the day in the Roman Catholic Church
  • noun
  • Formal
translation icon : hora canónica
  • During the daily and nightly recitation of the canonical hours (which did not involve lay participation), screens protected the ecclesiastical communities from chill and drafts.

Examples

  • At the canonical hour, it is customary for the community to join in silent meditation.

  • They pray the seven canonical hours.

    Fiction book (2002)

  • The monks gather in the chapel for each canonical hour to pray and reflect.

  • As the sun began to set, they prepared for the evening canonical hour of prayer.

Surface Forms

canonical hour singular
canonical hours plural

Morphology

canonical + hour

The meaning 'a fixed time of day set aside for prayer' is directly inferable from combining 'canonical' (official/religious) with 'hour' (a time), so a learner who knows both constituents can understand it refers to an officially prescribed religious time. Although somewhat specialized ecclesiastical vocabulary, the construction is compositional and predictable rather than idiomatic.

Etymology

The phrase canonical hour comes from early church practice of setting certain times of the day for prayer. Here canonical means 'according to church rules' and hour means a 'set time', so the phrase now means 'one of the fixed times to pray'.