A book I'm reading tells me that the Latin root of the word prayer is a word that's virtually equivalent (spelling-wise, that is) to "precarious". Is that what the Latin word means? If so--whoa: I've been on thinner ice than I realized!
The noun is preces, which is plural; the singular is prex. Precarius is an adjective and means obtained by entreaty, granted to prayer. The meaning of the English word came through a sense of "dependent on the will or favor of another."
Okay; I've dug out the book ("Healing Words"). I guess the author (Larry Dossey, M.D.) was wrong. He says "Prayer" comes from the Latin precarius, "obtained by begging,", and precari, "to entreat"--to ask earnestly, beseech, implore.
Prayer is not an adjective.
AHD4 does trace the English noun back to the Latin adjective.
http://www.bartleby.com/61/48/P0504800.htmlThe sense leading to the Modern English
precarious I noted above is from the OED.
The American HeritageŽ Dictionary of the English Language (Fourth Edition) 2000, sez that, in the legal sense, a prayer is "a request of a complainant, as stated in a complaint or in equity, that the court grant the aid or relief solicited." Once, when I was hearing a small-claims case, I told the unrepresented plaintiff that I could not "grant her prayer" to which she responded "I'm not prayin' to you, buddy. You may think you are God, but you're not."
In Holy Mother Church, the "preces" are a series of short prayers, in the form of versicle and response, which occur in the daily offices.