ceremony
Pluralceremonies
- 1A formal gathering arranged to celebrate, commemorate, or otherwise mark an important event.
The graduation ceremony lasted nearly three hours in the summer heat.
Veterans gathered for a ceremony marking the anniversary of the armistice.
Similarservice, celebration, commemoration
- 2A ritual performed for its religious or cultural significance.
The tea ceremony in Japan unfolds through carefully choreographed gestures.
Mourners took part in a ceremony to honor their ancestors.
Similarritual, rite, observance
Note
The oldest layer of the word, and the one its Latin source names outright. Caerimonia meant sacredness, reverence, a sacred rite, and it reached English as Middle English cerymonye. The sacred origin did not keep the word inside the church: Henry James calls afternoon tea a ceremony in The Portrait of a Lady (1881). Used countably it names a particular rite; used uncountably it names ritual in general.
- 3Formal, socially established behavior, often observed between people of different ranks.
The new manager disliked ceremony and asked everyone to use first names.
Court life demanded a level of ceremony that exhausted the young prince.
Similarformality, protocol, etiquette, decorum
Oppositeinformality
Note
A manner rather than an event, and so never counted: one shows ceremony, not a ceremony. It pairs naturally with with and without. In Somerset Maugham's Ashenden (1928), a manager makes an introduction with ceremony. In C. S. Forester's Hunting the Bismarck (1959), drinkers are hustled out of bars without ceremony, meaning bluntly, with no courtesy at all. That second phrase is the handiest way to describe something done abruptly.
- 4A show of magnificence, display, or ostentation.
The coronation was conducted with all the ceremony the empire could muster.
He distrusted the ceremony of the court, preferring plain rooms and plain speech.
Similarpomp, pageantry, splendor, grandeur
Oppositesimplicity, plainness
Note
Splendor is the point here, not the rite: the trumpets and retinues that make an occasion impressive. Milton's heralds in Paradise Lost proclaim a council "with awful ceremony," and Washington Irving in 1829 pairs the word with pomp. In pomp and ceremony, each word reinforces the other. Like the sense of formality it is uncountable, but formality governs behavior, while this sense describes spectacle.
Less common meanings
- 5An object or accessory associated with a ritual.
Note
An obsolete use found in Shakespeare: the word could name the physical trappings of rank and rite rather than the rite itself. In Measure for Measure the list makes it plain: the king's crown, the deputed sword, the marshal's truncheon, the judge's robe. In Henry V, a king with "his ceremonies laid by" is only a man. Read such lines as referring to objects, not occasions.
- 6A sign or omen taken to foretell future events.
Caesar, I never stood on ceremonies, Yet now they fright me.
1599, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”For he is superstitious grown of late, Quite from the main opinion he held once Of fantasy, of dreams, and ceremonies.
1599, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”Note
An obsolete meaning that is easy to misread in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. The line "Caesar, I never stood on ceremonies, / Yet now they fright me" is about putting no stock in omens, not about formal good manners. Another line in the play confirms the sense, describing Caesar as grown superstitious about "fantasy, of dreams, and ceremonies." Here ceremonies are signs read as warnings.
Practice
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Origin
It comes from Middle English cerymonye, which came from Latin caerimonia (also spelled caeremonia, and later often cerimonia), meaning "sacredness, reverence, or a sacred rite."