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Canon   /kˈænən/   Listen
noun
canon  n.  
1.
A law or rule. "Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon 'gainst self-slaughter."
2.
(Eccl.) A law, or rule of doctrine or discipline, enacted by a council and confirmed by the pope or the sovereign; a decision, regulation, code, or constitution made by ecclesiastical authority. "Various canons which were made in councils held in the second centry."
3.
The collection of books received as genuine Holy Scriptures, called the sacred canon, or general rule of moral and religious duty, given by inspiration; the Bible; also, any one of the canonical Scriptures. See Canonical books, under Canonical, a.
4.
In monasteries, a book containing the rules of a religious order.
5.
A catalogue of saints acknowledged and canonized in the Roman Catholic Church.
6.
A member of a cathedral chapter; a person who possesses a prebend in a cathedral or collegiate church.
7.
(Mus.) A musical composition in which the voices begin one after another, at regular intervals, successively taking up the same subject. It either winds up with a coda (tailpiece), or, as each voice finishes, commences anew, thus forming a perpetual fugue or round. It is the strictest form of imitation. See Imitation.
8.
(Print.) The largest size of type having a specific name; so called from having been used for printing the canons of the church.
9.
The part of a bell by which it is suspended; called also ear and shank.
10.
(Billiards) See Carom.
Apostolical canons. See under Apostolical.
Augustinian canons, Black canons. See under Augustinian.
Canon capitular, Canon residentiary, a resident member of a cathedral chapter (during a part or the whole of the year).
Canon law. See under Law.
Canon of the Mass (R. C. Ch.), that part of the mass, following the Sanctus, which never changes.
Honorary canon, a canon (6) who neither lived in a monastery, nor kept the canonical hours.
Minor canon (Ch. of Eng.), one who has been admitted to a chapter, but has not yet received a prebend.
Regular canon (R. C. Ch.), one who lived in a conventual community and followed the rule of St. Austin; a Black canon.
Secular canon (R. C. Ch.), one who did not live in a monastery, but kept the hours.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Canon" Quotes from Famous Books



... bear in mind Milton's threefold canon, we must admit that his poetry lacks three great elements of power. He is not Simple, Sensuous, or Passionate. He is too essentially modern to be really simple. He is the product of a high-strung civilization, and all its complicated crosscurrents of thought ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... did most to bring reading in bed into evil repute was Mrs. Charles Elstob, ward and sister of the Canon of Canterbury (circa 1700). In his "Dissertation on Letter-Founders," Rowe Mores describes this woman as the "indefessa comes" of her brother's studies, a female student in Oxford. She was, says Mores, a northern lady ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... Rawlinson, Dogma, Fact and Experience, p. 16. "All the virtues in the Aristotelian canon are self-contained states of the virtuous man himself .... In the last resort they are entirely self-centred adornments or accomplishments of the good man; and it is significant of this self-centredness of the entire conception that the qualities of display ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... naval officer of superior rank, who impartially declared: "Lorsqu'un navire de guerre se propose d'arreter et de visiter un vaisseau marchand, le commandant, avant de mettre une embarcation a la mer, fera tirer un coup de canon. Le coup de canon est la meilleure garantie que l'on puisse donner. Les navires de commerce n'ont pas de canons a bord." (When a warship intends to stop and board a merchant vessel the commander, before sending a boat, will fire a gun. The firing of a gun is the best guarantee ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... they are the organisms which are fittest to live. By 'fittest' is of course meant that which is best adapted to the environment, or, as it is simply a question of survival, that which so fits the conditions of the environment that it is able to survive. The canon of the principle of natural selection is on the face of it relative. No one would say that the principle can be interpreted as an absolute law for conduct, after the fashion of the absolute laws laid down by the rationalist moralists; what is involved is simply ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley


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