minor order
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.56 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
One of the orders of the Catholic or Orthodox Church lower than the major orders (diaconate and priesthood); especially (Catholicism, historical) the order of porter, lector, exorcist, or acolyte.
noun
Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see minor, order.
Example Sentences
- "cleric in minor orders"
- "After the oath and minor orders, he was ordained subdeacon June 14, 1710, and deacon and priest […]"
- "The third minor order is that of reader. His functions are to read or to sing the lessons which are said in the offices of the Church, except the epistle of the Mass, and to teach Christian doctrine to the children."
- "The first Minor Order is the Ostiariate or the Order of Ostiary. The duty of this order is to take care of the House of God, to summon the faithful at the hours for the holy offices and to see […]"
- "In various churches some little substance was left in common for the lesser clerics in minor orders who, unlike the others, could not have their distinct shares as they were not yet pledged to a church. But so small were the shares of these younger ones that they were not enough to maintain as many clerics as were needed successively to fill and supply the sacred orders. So (in order to maintain at least a semblance of the ancient rule about progressing via all the minor orders in order to be promoted to the sacred ones) all the minor orders had to be conferred at the same time. 18. The functions of the minor orders were thus abolished, and no trace of them remains except in the case of altar-boys of cathedral and collegiate churches."
- "Reader, cantor, and subdeacon are the most common minor orders in the contemporary Orthodox Church, though there are other minor orders from Orthodoxy’s past that might inform Orthodoxy’s future."