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Glite Dictionary
🍞 Part of service 💰 Offering money
offertory

offertory

1 9.8
Part of a church service when bread and wine are brought to the altar
  • noun
  • /ˈɔːfərˌtɔːri/
  • Literature
translation icon : ofertorio
  • The choir sang a hymn while the congregation made their offerings during the offertory.
  • begin the offertory

Examples

  • During the offertory, the congregation presented the bread and wine as part of the service.

  • During the offertory, he began crying or weeping -- weeping, I guess, because there was something stagey about it.

    Fiction book (1994)

  • Well, it was at the 10:00 Mass, right after the offertory.

    Touch (1997)

  • I arrived rather late, after you had begun the offertory.

    Academic text (2001)

  • Some candles at an offertory, some others on an altar, provide the only light.

    Fiction book (1992)

  • Our Holy Father may not have appreciated the little ditty performed for the offertory today at our parish.

    Blog text (32)

  • Moreover, there is a difference between those who come in procession at Offertory; they bring their gifts with joy.

    Blog text (4)

  • We can hear that our Offertory chant is a prayer of asking, and our Communion chant is a prayer of receiving.

    Blog text (2)

  • The preparation of the altar and the gifts and the presentation of and prayer over the gifts (the Offertory) precede the Eucharistic Prayer, which begins with the priest and people wishing that the Lord be with one another's spirit.

    Blog text (27)

  • At the offertory of the Mass, the priest blessed the gifts of bread and wine offered to God.

Synonyms

religious offering
vsoffertory
  • Specialized
6.7

To bring bread and wine to the altar during a Christian service

is the service segment when those gifts are presented to God

Surface Forms

offertory singular
offertories plural

Morphology

offertory = offer (semi-transparent) = offer + tory

The connection to 'offer' is clear, but the specific liturgical meaning 'the part of the service when offerings are presented' is a specialized ecclesiastical sense not obvious to all learners.

Etymology

The word offertory comes from the Latin offerre 'to offer' and is the same root as the everyday word offer. It originally named the moment in the service when bread, wine and other gifts are brought and presented to God, so offertory means that part of the worship.