Other forms: ceremonies
A ceremony is a formal event that follows a fixed order — the same words, the same movements, every time. A wedding in a register office, a medal hung round a swimmer's neck, a school hall on prize day.
You hold a ceremony, perform one, or attend one. The adjective is ceremonial, as in a ceremonial sword; ceremonious describes a person who is grandly, stiffly formal. Two set phrases pull the other way, towards no ceremony at all: to stand on ceremony is to insist on the polite formalities, so don't stand on ceremony means help yourself; and to do something without ceremony is to do it plainly and fast. Note that the ceremony is the ritual part only — at a wedding the ceremony ends and the reception begins.
1nounceremonyA formal event carried out in a fixed order to mark an important occasion.~98%
“The ceremony lasted twenty minutes and the photographs took two hours.”
2nounpoliteFormal polite behaviour and ritual, taken as a whole.~2%
“He handed over the keys without ceremony and drove away.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 23 sentences found in the wild and placed 23 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
ceremony is a formal event.
Ceremony arrives through Middle English cerymonye from Latin caerimonia, later cerimonia, meaning sacredness, reverence, a sacred rite. The Roman word was religious first: the awe owed to the gods and the exact acts that showed it. Modern ceremonies keep the exactness even where the gods have gone — say the words in the right order, or do it again.
Latin
caerimonia
Middle English
cerymonye
English, today
ceremony
Built from
From Middle English cerymonye, from Latin caerimonia or caeremonia, later often cerimonia (“sacredness, reverence, a sacred rite”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA