Liturgy

How to spell liturgy

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce liturgy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does liturgy mean?

1. nounA fixed set of rituals, prayers, and words used in public religious worship.

Liturgy in a sentence

• The cathedral follows an ancient liturgy that has barely changed in centuries.

• The new priest spent weeks learning the liturgy before his first service.

Where does liturgy come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word comes from the Greek leitourgia, which literally meant a public service or duty performed by a citizen on behalf of the community. It was built from leitos, meaning 'public' or 'of the people', and ergon, meaning 'work', the same root that gives us 'energy' and 'surgery'. In ancient Athens a leitourgia was a costly civic obligation, such as funding a chorus or fitting out a warship, paid for by a wealthy individual for the public good. Early Christian writers borrowed the term to describe the formal, communal worship of the church, the shared 'work of the people' offered in prayer. It travelled into Latin as liturgia and reached English in the early 1500s, mainly through ecclesiastical writing. The buried ergon root explains the tricky spelling: the central -tur- and the soft g before y, rather than the more obvious 'lit-ergy', is what catches most writers out.

How the word is built

• lit- (from Greek leitos: public, of the people)
• -urgy (from ergon: work)
• -y (noun suffix)