Faith & RitualGreek → English
Liturgy
/ˈlɪtədʒi/noun
The set form of public worship used by a church.
The Greek roots
λεῖτος
leîtos
public, of the people
ἔργον
érgon
work
Literally: “public work”
The story of the word
In classical Athens a leitourgia was a tax paid in effort: a rich citizen was assigned to fit out a warship for a year or fund and train a chorus for the festival. Nothing religious about it. The Greek Bible then used the word for temple service, and the church took it from there, so a word for civic duty ended up meaning the Mass. Energy and surgery share the work half.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
energysurgeryergonomiclaity
In a sentence
The liturgy has barely changed in four hundred years, which is the point of it.