antiphon

Definitions

1. A devotional chant; a piece of music sung responsively.
2. an Ancient Greek sophist who wrote several philosophical treatises (480 – 411 BCE)
3. A response or reply.
4. the brother of Plato
5. the earliest of the ten orators, an important figure in fifth-century Athenian political and intellectual life, from Rhamnus

Equivalents

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.”

“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.’”

CEFR level