the.com/rite
A choreographed promise that turns ordinary humans into something the tribe agrees is changed.
means A formal ceremony or set of actions performed in a prescribed way, often marking a religious or social transition.
from From Latin 'ritus,' meaning a religious observance or custom — the established way a thing is properly done. It came into English through Old French, and it's likely a distant cousin of words tied to counting and ordering (possibly related to the same root that gives us 'arithmetic'), as if a rite were the world's oldest fixed sequence: do this, then this, then this, and the change takes hold.
- latin root
- From ritus, meaning custom or proper way
- not right
- Homophone of right, but legally unrelated
- rites of passage
- Term coined by anthropologist Arnold van Gennep, 1909
- three phases
- Separation, transition, then reincorporation into society
- last rites
- Catholic ritual for those near death
rite of passage — anthropological concept documented across cultures, e.g., bar mitzvah at age 13 in jewish tradition
last rites — catholic sacrament administered to dying or deceased persons by priests
rite of spring — stravinsky's 1913 ballet premiere that caused a riot at théâtre des champs-élysées in paris