ritual

1. N-VAR.

A ritual is a religious service or other ceremony which involves a series of actions performed in a fixed order.

• This is the most ancient, and holiest of the Shinto rituals.
  

3. N-VAR.

A ritual is a way of behaving or a series of actions which people regularly carry out in a particular situation, because it is their custom to do so.

• The whole Italian culture revolves around the ritual of eating.
  

자료: Collins Cobuild

cf. ritual: A favourite but deplorable term commonly used by archaeologists looking to explain unfamiliar patterns in material culture that seem to have no functional explanation. Ritual strictly refers to practices connected with magical, supernatural, or religious experiences and beliefs, ritual deposits being the result of material culture deployed as part of such practices. It is now widely recognized, however, that in non-capitalist, non-westernized societies there is no formal boundary between what is ritual and secular, between the sacred and the profane.

자료: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology, http://www.answers.com/ritual