Form, formality, ceremony, ceremonial, rite, ritual, liturgy mean an established or fixed method of procedure especially as enjoined by law, the customs of social intercourse, or the church.
Form is the comprehensive term applicable to a recognized way of doing things in accordance with rule or prescription.
Form often implies show without substance or suggests an outward shell devoid of its life or spirit.
Formality applies to some more or less perfunctory or conventional procedure required. by law, custom, or etiquette. The term often implies endless detail or red tape.
Ceremony is more specific than form and implies certain outward acts, usually of an impressive or dignified character, associated with some religious, public, or state occasion or, collectively, with a church or a court. Ceremony also applies to the conventional usages of civility.
Ceremonial (compare CEREMONIAL ) is occasionally used in place of ceremony in its concrete applications; more often it is a collective noun applied to an entire system of ceremonies prescribed by a court or a church. The last three terms of this group refer primarily to religious ceremonies and only secondarily to the ceremonies or forms of civil life.
A rite is the form prescribed by a church or other organization for conducting one of its ceremonies or, in the case of a church, for administering one of its sacraments, giving not only the words to be uttered but the acts to be performed.
Ritual is, in effect, a collective noun applied either to all the rites that make up an elaborate religious service or to all the rites or all the ceremonies of a particular church, religion, or organization; it is, however, applicable to a rite when that represents the one form in use in the specific religion or body.
Consequently, in extended use, rite and ritual both refer to the customary or established order of procedure for conducting not only a ceremony or a series of ceremonial acts, but all kinds of formalities or forms.
Liturgy applies primarily to the Eucharistic service, especially that of the Orthodox and the Uniate churches (specifically called “Divine Liturgy ” in many of these) and of the Roman Catholic Church (specifically called the “Mass” in the Latin Church).
In the Anglican Communion liturgy applies to the Book of Common Prayer, the service book of that church. It is applied also to a strictly religious rite or ritual, but this is confusing because rite and ritual stress the form to be followed and liturgy the complete service as followed in a particular church; thus, the Roman rite is now generally followed in the liturgy of that branch of the Roman Catholic Church called the Latin Church.