office of the dead
noun · n
Simple meaning
An office read or sung before a burial mass in the Roman Catholic Church.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
awfuhsuhvthuhdedSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɔfəsəvðədɛd
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
An office read or sung before a burial mass in the Roman Catholic Church
n
The Office of the Dead or Office for the Dead (in Latin, Officium Defunctorum) is a prayer cycle of the Canonical Hours in the Catholic Church, Anglican Church and Lutheran Church, said for the repose of the soul of a decedent.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: An office read or sung before a burial mass in the Roman Catholic Church
Used this way, office of the dead is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a religious use: it carries the weight of tradition and ceremony.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Religion/spirituality
- Historical writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.