1. A devotional composition sung responsively as part of a liturgy.
2. 1. A short liturgical text chanted or sung responsively preceding or following a psalm, psalm verse, or canticle.
   2. Such a text formerly used as a response but now rendered independently.
3. A response; a reply: "It would be truer . . . to see [conservation] as an antiphon to the modernization of the 1950s and 1960s" (Raphael Samuel).

[Late Latin antiphōna, sung responses. See anthem.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.