noun
definition
In poetry and songs, particularly hymns, one of a series of lines that are shorter than a standard line of verse.
definition
In liturgy, the verse said by the officiant.
Examples of versicles in a Sentence
On the contrary, many of them took pleasure in composing versicles to which Chinese words were admitted and which showed something of the parallelism peculiar to Chinese poetry, since the first ideograph of the last line was required to be identical with the final ideograph.
For the composition of the uta gradually deteriorated from the end ofthe 9th century, when a game called uta-awase became a fashionable pastime, and aristocratic men and women tried to string together versicles of 31 syllables, careful of the form and careless of the thought.
This is the very backbone of the Breviary, the groundwork of the Catholic prayer-book; out of it have grown the antiphons, responsories and versicles.
The versicles are short responsories used after the little chapters.
Fortunately, however, the Gregorian canto fermo associated with it is of exceptional beauty and symmetry; and the great 16th century masters either, like Palestrina, left it to be sung as plain-chant, or obviated all occasion for dramatic expression by setting it in versicles (like their settings of the Magnificat and other canticles) for two groups of voices alternatively, or for the choir in alternation with the plain chant of the priests.