acroteleutic

acroteleutic

English

Etymology

Ancient Greek [Term?] (“extreme end”)

Noun

acroteleutic (plural acroteleutics)

1. (obsolete, Christianity) The end of a verse or psalm, or something added to it, to be sung by the people by way of a response.
   • 1853, John Farrar, An Ecclesiastical Dictionary‎:

     This mode of conducting the psalmody was sometimes called singing acrostics and acroteleutics, and is the apparent origin of the Gloria Patri repeated at the end of each psalm in our liturgical services.

   • 1855, Richard Bingham, The antiquities of the Christian church‎, page 18:

     And in this respect the Gloria Patri itself is by some ancient writers called the hypopsalma or epode, and acroteleutic to the psalms, because it was always used at the end of the psalms.

   • 1887, A History of Music: book III. The decline of paganism and the dark ages‎:

     And this they would generally keep for an Acroteleutic at the end of their psalms.