I thought I'd respond to this post in a separate post. Anonymous asked:

Ritual or ceremony? Is there a difference? I know what the dictionary definitions are, but a friend and I are having a dispute about whether those two words can be used interchangeably. Where do you draw the line? And do the origins of the words actually clarify their true intended meanings? Does anyone have any input?

They do not mean the same thing, at all, nor are they interchangeable, though you can make a case for them being closely associated. Both words are borrowed from Latin, and from about the same time (within a hundred years of each other, in fact; ritual first entered English in the late 14th century, via John Wycliff's translation of the Bible; ceremony first entered English in 1570, and was used as a noun in 1649.

Essentially, ceremony is the larger category in that the ceremony is the larger category. A ceremony can consist of several rituals. The key distinction(via the AHD) is the idea of a ritual involving

1. The prescribed order of a religious ceremony.
2. The prescribed form of conducting a formal secular ceremony: the ritual of an inauguration.

In other words, the ritual is prescribed, regulated, and has a specific format or sequence. The ceremony, on the other hand (according to the AHD) is:

1. A formal act or set of acts performed as prescribed by ritual or custom: a wedding ceremony; the Japanese tea ceremony.
2. A conventional social gesture or act of courtesy: the ceremony of shaking hands when introduced.
3. A formal act without intrinsic purpose; an empty form: ignored the ceremony of asking for comments from other committee members.
4. Strict observance of formalities or etiquette: The head of state was welcomed with full ceremony.

A ceremony is more often than not the thing the ritual is part of; in fact a single ceremony can consist of several specific rituals, each with its own prescribed activities and sequence. There are also additional connotative differences, which depend very much on context. Ritual often connotes something sacred or religious. You can, for instance, have a secular non-religious wedding ceremony. The fact that both words were borrowed from Latin, by the way, is a clue that they are slightly different in meaning and connotation: there are few true synonyms in English that are borrowed from the same languages, since few languages have anything like the number of synonyms and closely related words in terms of meaning that English has.