Antiphon
name, noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A devotional chant; a piece of music sung responsively.
"Father Vaillant came back in his vestments, with his pyx and basin of holy water, and began sprinkling the bed and the watchers, repeating the antiphon, Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundabor."
- 2 a verse or song to be chanted or sung in response wordnet
- 3 A response or reply.
"The Clown […] says: ‘And so we wept; and there was the first gentleman-like tears that ever we shed’; to which his father, the Shepherd, adds the comfortable antiphon, ‘We may live, son, to shed many more.’"
- 1 an Ancient Greek sophist who wrote several philosophical treatises (480 – 411 BCE)
- 2 the brother of Plato
- 3 the earliest of the ten orators, an important figure in fifth-century Athenian political and intellectual life, from Rhamnus
Example
More examples"Father Vaillant came back in his vestments, with his pyx and basin of holy water, and began sprinkling the bed and the watchers, repeating the antiphon, Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundabor."
Etymology
From French antiphone or Medieval Latin antiphōna, from Ancient Greek ἀντίφωνα (antíphōna, “responses, musical accords”), neuter plural substantive of ἀντίφωνος (antíphōnos, “concordant”) from ἀντί (antí, “in return”) + φωνή (phōnḗ, “sound”). Doublet of anthem.
Related phrases
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.