horarium

Horarium is a Latin term meaning a schedule of the day divided into hours. The word derives from hora, "hour," with the suffix -arium, and in historical usage it referred to the orderly arrangement of daily time into prescribed periods for work, prayer, or administration.

In religious contexts, the horarium is most closely associated with the canon of secular and regular religious communities—the canonical hours. This system divides the day into specific times for prayers such as Matins (Vigils), Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline, often accompanied by periods of work and meals.

Monastic communities developed their own variants of the horarium, commonly called the horarium monasticum. Different orders adapted the schedule, causing differences in the length and naming of hours, but the basic idea remained the same: to regulate spiritual routines and daily labor through fixed times.

In secular or medical usage, the term horarium has been used to describe a daily timetable for activities, including medication administration, meals, rounds, and other routine care. In historical hospital records, horarium can indicate the planned times for various duties.

Today, horarium is primarily encountered in historical, liturgical, or scholarly contexts. In English, terms such as canonical hours or schedule are more common, while in Latin and some Romance languages the word survives as a direct cognate of "schedule" or "timetable."