Litany

 WORD OF THE DAY

litany / noun / LIT-uh-nee

Definition
1: a prayer consisting of a series of invocations and supplications by the leader with alternate responses by the congregation
2a: a resonant or repetitive chant
2b: a usually lengthy recitation or enumeration
2c: a sizable series or set

Examples
“As soon as Mahershala Ali, the previous year’s supporting-actor winner for 'Green Book,' escorted her behind the curtain, [Laura] Dern made a straight line to the thank-you cam to rattle off a litany of names.”
— Anthony Breznican, Vanity Fair, 23 Apr. 2021

Russell was one of the game’s great originary figures, its brightest early star, a kind of Adam and a kind of Paul Bunyan, his litany of accomplishments absurd in its length and fable-like texture.
— Vinson Cunningham, The New Yorker, 1 Aug. 2022

Did You Know?
How do we love the word litany? Let us count the ways.
We love its original 13th century meaning, still in use today, referring to a call-and-response prayer in which a series of lines are spoken alternately by a leader and a congregation.
We love how litany has developed in the intervening centuries three figurative senses, and we love each of these as well: first, a sense meaning “repetitive chant”; next, the “lengthy recitation” sense owing to the repetitious—and sometimes interminable—nature of the original litany; and finally, an even broader sense referring to any sizeable series or set.
Though litanies of this third sort tend to be unpleasant, we choose today to think of the loveliness found in the idea of “a litany of sonnets by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.”