Definition of "compline" [com•pline]

• The last of the seven canonical hours recited or sung just before retiring. (noun)
• The time of day appointed for this service. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "I have done the Office every day since Ash Wednesday -- on good days going through the morning rite, the service for midday, evening prayer, and a compline before bed; on days when I performed the tasks of a single dad sometimes only saying part of the Office."
• "To keep a medieval focus: I often sing with a compline group at Columbia, on Sunday nights."
• "Such behavior was common, for almost all of the nuns of Adelhausen are said to have wept in the choir and the dormitory after compline, loudly enough to be heard at quite a distance. 132 Anna Turner was not among them."