English

Noun

precation ‎(plural precations)

1. (rare) A prayer or act of praying; an earnest request.
   • 1881, Richard Watson Dixon, History of the Church of England, Vol. 2, Routledge, p. 431:

     The Litany . . . was ordered to be sung immediately before High Mass, by the priests "with others of the choir". . . . and this solemn form of precation, like so many other things, assumed the livery of uniformity.

   • 1893, Charles P. G. Scott, "English Words Which Hav Gaind or Lost an Initial Consonant by Attraction," Transactions of the American Philological Association, vol. 24, p. 123:

     The full form of the precation was God give you a good even.

   • 1996, J. L. Styan, The English Stage, ISBN 9780521556361, pp. xiii-xiv:

     The present inquiry therefore aims to pay more than lipservice to the notion of drama as performance, and to make more than a gesture towards the idea of theatre as a composite art, one that mixes music and mime, dance and song, painting and design, poetry and narrative, and much else. It is precation and response, and seeks out evidence of the manipulation of the audience and its powers of perception.

Derived terms

• precative
• precatory

References

• Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1989.

Anagrams

• captioner, recaption