LITANY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does Litany mean? 

• LITANY (noun)
  The noun LITANY has 2 senses:

1. any long and tedious address or recital

2. a prayer consisting of a series of invocations by the priest with responses from the congregation

  Familiarity information: LITANY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LITANY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Any long and tedious address or recital

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Context example:

a litany of failures

Hypernyms ("litany" is a kind of...):

address; speech (the act of delivering a formal spoken communication to an audience)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A prayer consisting of a series of invocations by the priest with responses from the congregation

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Instance hypernyms:

prayer (a fixed text used in praying)

Holonyms ("Litany" is a part of...):

Book of Common Prayer (the Anglican service book of the Church of England; has had several revisions since the Reformation and is widely admired for the dignity and beauty of its language)

 Context examples 

“Shall it be a litany, my good clerk?” shouted a third; “or would a hymn be good enough to serve?”

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Three times we have had to draw, and once at La Reolle we stood over our wool-bales, Watkin and I, and we laid about us for as long as a man might chant a litany, slaying one rogue and wounding two others.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)