The Collaborative International Dictionary
Hour \Hour\, n. [OE. hour, our, hore, ure, OF. hore, ore, ure, F. heure, L. hora, fr. Gr. ?, orig., a definite space of time, fixed by natural laws; hence, a season, the time of the day, an hour. See Year, and cf. Horologe, Horoscope.]
The twenty-fourth part of a day; sixty minutes.
The time of the day, as expressed in hours and minutes, and indicated by a timepiece; as, what is the hour? At what hour shall we meet?
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Fixed or appointed time; conjuncture; a particular time or occasion; as, the hour of greatest peril; the man for the hour.
Woman, . . . mine hour is not yet come.
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This is your hour, and the power of darkness.
--Luke xxii. 53.4. pl. (R. C. Ch.) Certain prayers to be repeated at stated times of the day, as matins and vespers.
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A measure of distance traveled. Vilvoorden, three hours from Brussels. --J. P. Peters. After hours, after the time appointed for one's regular labor. Canonical hours. See under Canonical. Hour angle (Astron.), the angle between the hour circle passing through a given body, and the meridian of a place. Hour circle. (Astron.)
Any circle of the sphere passing through the two poles of the equator; esp., one of the circles drawn on an artificial globe through the poles, and dividing the equator into spaces of 15[deg], or one hour, each.
A circle upon an equatorial telescope lying parallel to the plane of the earth's equator, and graduated in hours and subdivisions of hours of right ascension.
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A small brass circle attached to the north pole of an artificial globe, and divided into twenty-four parts or hours. It is used to mark differences of time in working problems on the globe. Hour hand, the hand or index which shows the hour on a timepiece. Hour line.
(Astron.) A line indicating the hour.
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(Dialing) A line on which the shadow falls at a given hour; the intersection of an hour circle which the face of the dial.
Hour plate, the plate of a timepiece on which the hours are marked; the dial.
--Locke.Sidereal hour, the twenty-fourth part of a sidereal day.
Solar hour, the twenty-fourth part of a solar day.
The small hours, the early hours of the morning, as one o'clock, two o'clock, etc.
To keep good hours, to be regular in going to bed early.
canonic \ca*non"ic\ (k[.a]*n[o^]n"[i^]k), canonical \ca*non"ic*al\ (k[.a]*n[o^]n"[i^]*kal), a. [L. canonicus, LL. canonicalis, fr. L. canon: cf. F. canonique. See canon.] Of or pertaining to a canon; established by, or according to, a canon or canons. ``The oath of canonical obedience.'' --Hallam. 2. Appearing in a Biblical canon; as, a canonical book of the Christian New Testament. 3. Accepted as authoritative; recognized. 4. (Math.) In its standard form, usually also the simplest form; -- of an equation or coordinate. 5. (Linguistics) Reduced to the simplest and most significant form possible without loss of generality; as, a canonical syllable pattern. Opposite of nonstandard. Syn: standard. [WordNet
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5]
6. Pertaining to or resembling a musical canon.
Canonical books, or Canonical Scriptures, those books which are declared by the canons of the church to be of divine inspiration; -- called collectively the canon. The Roman Catholic Church holds as canonical several books which Protestants reject as apocryphal.
Canonical epistles, an appellation given to the epistles called also general or catholic. See Catholic epistles, under Canholic.
Canonical form (Math.), the simples or most symmetrical form to which all functions of the same class can be reduced without lose of generality.
Canonical hours, certain stated times of the day, fixed by ecclesiastical laws, and appropriated to the offices of prayer and devotion; also, certain portions of the Breviary, to be used at stated hours of the day. In England, this name is also given to the hours from 8 a. m. to 3 p. m. (formerly 8 a. m. to 12 m.) before and after which marriage can not be legally performed in any parish church.
Canonical letters, letters of several kinds, formerly given by a bishop to traveling clergymen or laymen, to show that they were entitled to receive the communion, and to distinguish them from heretics.
Canonical life, the method or rule of living prescribed by the ancient clergy who lived in community; a course of living prescribed for the clergy, less rigid than the monastic, and more restrained that the secular.
Canonical obedience, submission to the canons of a church, especially the submission of the inferior clergy to their bishops, and of other religious orders to their superiors.
Canonical punishments, such as the church may inflict, as excommunication, degradation, penance, etc.
Canonical sins (Anc. Church.), those for which capital punishment or public penance decreed by the canon was inflicted, as idolatry, murder, adultery, heresy.
Wiktionary
n. 1 (context in the plural English) The times of day at which canon law prescribes certain prayers to be said; matins with lauds, prime, tierce, sext, nones, vespers, and complin 2 (context pluralonly English) The prayers said at these times
Wikipedia
In the practice of Christianity, canonical hours mark the divisions of the day in terms of periods of fixed prayer at regular intervals. A Book of Hours normally contains a version of, or selection from, such prayers.
The practice of daily prayers grew from the Jewish practice of reciting prayers at set times of the day: for example, in the Book of Acts, Peter and John visit the temple for the afternoon prayers . Psalm 119:164 states: "Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous laws" which is among the scriptural quotes in the attestation of Saint Symeon of Thessaloniki that commences "The times of prayer and the services are seven in number, like the number of gifts of the Spirit, since the holy prayers are from the Spirit."
This practice is believed to have been passed down through the centuries from the Apostles, with different practices developing in different places. As monasticism spread, the practice of specified hours and liturgical formats began to develop and become standardized. Around the year 484, Sabbas began the process of recording the liturgical practices around Jerusalem while the cathedral and parish rites in the Patriarchate of Constantinople evolved in an entirely different manner; the two were synthesized commencing in the eighth century to yield an office of great complexity. In 525, Benedict of Nursia set out one of the earliest schemes for the recitation of the Psalter at the Office. With the Cluniac reforms of the 11th century there was a new emphasis on liturgy and the canonical hours in the reformed Benedictine priories with the Abbey of Cluny at their head.
In western Catholicism, canonical hours may also be called offices, since they refer to the official set of prayer of the Roman Catholic Church that is known variously as the divine office (from the Latin officium divinum meaning "divine service" or "divine duty"), and the opus Dei (meaning in Latin, "work of God"). The current official version of the hours in the Roman rite of the Roman Catholic Church is called the liturgy of the hours (Latin: liturgia horarum) in North America or divine office in Ireland and Britain. In the Anglican tradition, they are often known as the daily office (or divine office), to distinguish them from the other 'offices' of the Church, i.e. holy communion, baptism, etc. In the Orthodox Church, the canonical hours may be referred to as the divine services, and the book of hours is called the horologion . There are numerous small differences in practice according to local custom; but the overall order is the same among Byzantine Rite monasteries, although parish and cathedral customs vary rather more so by locale. The usage among the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Assyrian Church of the East and of their Eastern Catholic counterparts all differ from each other and from other rites.
Already well-established by the ninth century in the West, these canonical offices consisted of eight daily prayer events: lauds, prime, terce, sext, none, vespers and compline, and the night office, sometimes referred to as vigils, consisting of a number of sections called 'nocturnes'. Building on the recitation of psalms and canticles from scripture, the Church has added (and, at times, subtracted) hymns, hagiographical readings, and other prayers.
Usage examples of "canonical hours".
Here we tarry, as if, methinks, for no other purpose than to bear witness to the number of the corpses that are brought hither for interment, or to hearken if the brothers there within, whose number is now almost reduced to nought, chant their offices at the canonical hours, or, by our weeds of woe, to obtrude on the attention of every one that enters, the nature and degree of our sufferings.
To the right were the three floors occupied by those interred in life, where the gasp of the undertow at the cliffs and the prayers and canticles of the canonical hours almost never penetrated.
You may hear them inside at the canonical hours, and throughout the crypts below where machines toil to maintain a semblance of terrestrial environment.
Was it performed by a rector within the canonical hours of eight and twelve noon?
But nobody outside the monasteries bothered to know the exact time of day: they just referred to the nearest of the canonical hours of prayer.
APPENDIX The Months of the Year: Yanu Avril Sormas Quadrii Cintre Aogoste Setentre Octumbre Novarian Decial Askulavre Fevrua The Days of the Week: Mansday Secunday Ladysday Sonsday Jedday Lordsday Hefensday The Canonical Hours: Vigils (circa : a.
One day slipped into the next here confined in the rock walls, shrouded from the world outside, and the only constant was the round of prayer, the canonical hours that slid one into the next, Vigils becoming Lauds becoming Primri becoming Terce becoming Sext becoming Nones becoming Vespers be coming Compline becoming Vigils again.
Hence his feverish cogitations long into the night, past all the canonical hours of monastic worship.
Theresa and her brother almost never saw their father, who went to church seven times a day with the curate, observing the canonical hours.
He had been breaking clods in the field for fifteen hours, interrupted only by the ringing of the canonical hours from the squat, tiny church, and a mouthful of bread and soft cheese at noon.
The Office in progress was Compline, which closed the canonical hours for the day, and in two orderly lines the Gabrilite brethren, priests, Healers, and a few older students were filing out of their stalls and up the center aisle to make a reverence before their abbot and then conjure handfire symbolically from the light in his hands.
Far in the distance, they could hear the cathedral bells striking Compline, last of the canonical hours.
Matins and lauds, prime, terce, sext, nones, vespers and compline: at each of the canonical hours and often between them, prayers for a north wind rose from the churches of Kutali, prayers far more fervent than Jack or his advisers had imagined at first.