pericope
\ puh-RIK-uh-pee \, noun;
1.a selection or extract from a book.
2.a portion of sacred writing read in a divine service; lesson; lection.
Quotes:
...a single verse (and, in some cases, even a pericope ) is too small a unit to split analytically into fragments.
-- Donald Harman Akenson, Surpassing Wonder: the Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds , 1998
To say that you ‘hover … half-seas-over’ is to dismiss as drunkenness the vertigo and mystery and metaphysical drama of deep space, the claims of which are nonetheless conceded in phrases such as ‘glorious Gothic scenes’ and the telling juxtaposition in the same pericope of ‘phantasies’ and ‘soul’.
-- Geoffrey Ward, Byron and the Limits of Fiction , 1988, edited by Bernard Beatty and Vincent Newey
Origin:
Pericope came to Enlgish in the mid-1600s, and is ultimately derived from the Greek perikopḗ meaning "a cutting."
Dictionary.com
