epistle

• WordNet 3.6
  • n Epistle a book of the New Testament written in the form of a letter from an Apostle
  • n epistle a specially long, formal letter
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• • Epistle A writing directed or sent to a person or persons; a written communication; a letter; -- applied usually to formal, didactic, or elegant letters. "A madman's epistles are no gospels."
  • Epistle (Eccl) One of the letters in the New Testament which were addressed to their Christian brethren by Apostles. "One sees the pulpit on the epistle side ."
  • v. t Epistle To write; to communicate in a letter or by writing.
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• • n epistle A written communication directed or sent to a person at a distance; a letter; a letter missive: used particularly in dignified discourse or in speaking of ancient writings: as, the epistles of Paul, of Pliny, or of Cicero.
  • n epistle [capitalized] In liturgics, one of the eucharistic lessons, taken, with some exceptions, from an epistolary book of the New Testament and read before the gospel. In the early church a lection from the Old Testament, called the prophecy, preceded it, and such a lection is still sometimes used instead of it. In the Greek Church the epistle (called the apostle, as also in the early church) is preceded by the prokeimenon and followed by “Peace to thee” and “Alleluia”; in the Western Church it is preceded by the collects and followed by the Deo gratias, the gradual, tract, or alleluia, with the verse or sequence. It is read in the Greek Church by the anagnost or lector at the holy doors, and in the Western Church by the subdeacon or epistler (in the Roman Catholic Church the celebrant also reciting it in a low voice) at the south side of the altar, that is, at a part of the front of the altar on the celebrant's right as he faces it. Formerly it was read from the ambo (sometimes from a separate or epistle ambo) or pulpit, or from the step of the choir. Sometimes called the lection simply.
  • n epistle Any kind of harangue or discourse; a communication.
  • epistle To write as a letter; communicate by writing or by an epistle.
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• • n Epistle e-pis′l a writing sent to one, a letter: esp. a letter to an individual or church from an apostle, as the Epistles of Paul: the extract from one of the apostolical epistles read as part of the communion service
  • v.i Epistle (Milt.) to preface
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• Margaret Fuller

  

  “Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions.”
• Bible

  

  “But ye, brethren, be not weary in well doing. And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed.”

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