Missale

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A book containing the texts of the Mass used in religious services
2. A liturgical book employed by priests for celebrating the Eucharist, containing prayers and instructions
3. A comprehensive guide for the celebration of Mass, including readings and rituals specific to the occasion

Etymology: Medieval churches needed a single book that gathered everything a priest read or sang during Mass, and "missale" is the Medieval Latin name for it. The word is simply the neuter adjective "missalis," meaning "of the Mass," formed from "missa," the Latin word for the dismissal that closed the liturgy. "Missa" itself came to name the whole service, probably from the formula "Ite, missa est" ("Go, it is the dismissal"), a phrase whose last words were so closely associated with the rite that they gave their name to all of it. English borrowed the term directly from Medieval Latin in the 14th or 15th century, and it kept the original sense without change. Its close cousin "mass" entered English through Old English and kept its everyday meaning of the service itself, so the two words share a root but arrived by different routes.

Synonyms: missal