#liturgy

• Akathist — A hymnographic composition and liturgical service of praise in the Orthodox Church, dedicated to the Savior, the Mother of God, or the saints, strictly structured into 13 kontakia and 12 ikoi. Etymologically, the term indicates a solemn chant during which the faithful do not sit, but stand or kneel as a sign of profound veneration. In current, popular usage, the term also designates the list of names (prayer slip) accompanied by an offering, given to the priest to be commemorated during this service.
• Adonai — A Hebrew name used in the Old Testament (Torah) to designate the supreme divinity, literally translated as 'my Lord' or 'my Master'. This liturgical and theological term is traditionally used by Jewish communities as a pious and respectful substitute to avoid pronouncing the sacred Tetragrammaton (YHWH), whose name is considered ineffable.
• To adore — To render a religious cult to the supreme divinity; to honor with the highest degree of mystical veneration. In a profane, secular, or everyday sense, the term means to love excessively, demonstrating a profound passion, blind admiration, or extreme attachment to a person, ideal, artwork, or activity.
• Adoration — An archaic, literary, or old formal variant of the noun 'adorație', denoting the supreme manifestation of religious worship owed to divinity or a state of intense, deeply idealized, and passionate love. Although replaced in the modern lexicon by the shorter form, the term is preserved in historical biblical translations, old liturgical texts, and early romantic poetry.
• Equale — Equale; a short musical piece written for an ensemble of identical instruments or equal voices, historically used in Austria and Germany starting from the 18th century, especially during funeral ceremonies or religious processions. As a Latin adjective, it indicates a state of structural equality or rhythmic uniformity in an old choral composition.
• Holy water font variant — An archaic form or rare variant for agheasmatar; a consecrated vessel designed for holding holy water or a restricted ecclesiastical space arranged inside or near the house of worship for performing the water blessing ritual. It is found in old church manuscripts and 18th-century monastic inventories.
• Holy water font variant — A rare, popularly deformed, or regional form for the term agheasmatar; a consecrated vessel used in houses of worship for holding holy water or, by extension, the water blessing service performed by a priest during Christian feasts. It is found in southern dialects or handwritten church texts.
• Holy water font variant — A rare or regional term utilized in the past in some rural communities in the west of the country to designate a small portable wooden or metallic container used for transporting spring water or, in an ecclesiastical sense, a popularly phonetically altered variant for the person who accompanies the priest with holy water.
• Holy water font variant — A rare, archaic, or popularly deformed form for the person who sprinkles holy water or for the consecrated ritual vessel (aghiasmatar); in local dialects, it can indicate the person (cantor, sexton) who accompanies the priest with the holy water vessel during house blessings on Epiphany.
• Regional archaic vessel — A rare, archaic, or popularly distorted phonetic variant used in the past in the local dialects of certain rural areas of Moldavia to designate a small container, a chalice, or a ritual box used for holding holy gifts or blessed water; in some old documents, it may represent an altered transcription of liturgical terms of Greek or Slavic origin.
• Holy water font variant — A rare, popularly deformed, or regional form for the term agheasmatar; a consecrated vessel used in houses of worship for holding holy water or, by extension, the water blessing service performed by a priest during Christian feasts. It is found in southern dialects or handwritten church texts.
• Holy Lamb — The central, square-shaped piece cut from the first altar bread (prosphora) during the Liturgy of Preparation (Proskomedia), stamped with the seal of Jesus Christ (IC XC NI KA); it symbolically represents the Lamb of God and, through consecration during the Divine Liturgy, becomes the Eucharistic Body of Christ.
• Agnus — A shortened common term for 'Agnus Dei' (Lamb of God); it refers to a liturgical prayer, hymn, or formula recited in the Catholic Mass before communion, or to an iconographic representation of Jesus Christ depicted as a lamb bearing a triumphal banner or cross.
• Agonothete — A magistrate in ancient Greece who organized, financed, supervised, and presided over public games and athletic, musical, or dramatic contests. This high-prestige honorary office carried significant civic weight and required large personal financial contributions under the public liturgy system.
• Aliturgical — Non-liturgical, wherein the Holy Liturgy is not celebrated, or lacking a liturgical character. In Orthodox liturgical tradition, the term describes specific fast days during Lent or Good Friday when the celebration of the Divine Liturgy is strictly forbidden.
• altar — The most important and sacred part of a place of worship, usually located in the eastern section of Christian churches, separated from the nave by the iconostasis, where the priest celebrates the liturgy and performs religious sacraments; alternatively, an elevated stone or wooden table or structure in antiquity or various religions upon which sacrifices or ritual offerings were made to a deity.
• Pulpit — An archaic, popular, or regional variant of the modern term 'amvon' (pulpit); an elevated, beautifully decorated platform usually situated on the left side of the nave in a Christian church, from which the priest preaches to the faithful, reads the Gospel, or recites the main prayers. Preserved in old ecclesiastical language, this nominal form emphasizes the solemn character of the sacred space.
• Anaphora — A rhetorical and syntactic figure of speech consisting of the repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of several consecutive sentences, phrases, or verses, aiming to emphasize an idea, create symmetry, and enhance lyrical rhythm. In linguistics, it defines a coreference relation where a lexical unit points back to an entity previously mentioned in the text. In Eastern Christian (Orthodox) liturgy, the term (often capitalized) designates the central prayer of the Eucharistic sacrifice.
• Antidoron — Blessed bread (cut into small pieces, originating from the altar loaves from which the Holy Lamb was extracted) distributed to the faithful at the end of the Divine Liturgy or other Orthodox services. In a structural liturgical sense, it represents a symbol of blessing and spiritual communion, consumed by believers in the morning on an empty stomach as an act of piety and inner purification.
• Reader — A lower cleric in the Eastern Orthodox church hierarchy (belonging to the order of readers or subdeacons), whose primary duty is the solemn reading of non-evangelical sacred texts (the Epistle, Old Testament, proverbs) during holy services; in classical Greek and Roman antiquity, a slave or free professional structurally employed to read literary works or documents aloud during banquets and private gatherings.