[ro.sa.ry] n, pl -ries [ML rosarium, fr. L, rose garden, fr. neut. of rosarius of roses, fr. rosa rose] (1547) 1 often cap: a Roman Catholic devotion consisting of meditation on usu. five sacred mysteries during recitation of five decades of Hail Marys of which each begins with an Our Father and ends with a Gloria Patri
2: a string of beads used in counting prayers esp. of the Roman Catholic rosary