altarward

From altar +‎ -ward.

altarward (not comparable)

1. (rare) Being in or facing towards an altar. [from 19th c.]
   • 1874, John Thomas Micklethwaite, “Of the Pews” (chapter III), in Modern Parish Churches: Their Plan, Design, and Furniture, London: Henry S. King & Co., page 36:

     Side galleries are then practically useless. Æsthetically they altogether contradict the altarward tendency of the church.

   • 1938, Frederick Roth Webber, Studies in the Liturgy, Ashby Printing Company, page 65:

     This fact is always shown forth symbolically by the eastward, or altarward position.

   • 2011 [2004], Edward McPherson, “Wedding Bells and Hard Luck Goats” (chapter 9), in Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat‎^[1], Faber and Faber Ltd.:

     At twenty-five, Buster was a celebrity bachelor, and a Talmadge sister wedding - even if it involved the non-Hollywood one - was a newsworthy affair. So the media settled in to track the altarward progress of the Keaton-Talmadge sweethearts, though the date for the big event remained to be determined.

altarward (not comparable)

1. (now uncommon) In the direction of an altar, toward an altar. [from 19th c.]
   • 1873, Edgar Fawcett, chapter XIII, in Purple and Fine Linen, New York: G. W. Carleton & Co., page 136:

     I am morally certain that if, whilst I was being conducted altarward through that thronged church this morning, anybody had shown any portion of my person the fullest stabbing-qualities of which the largest-sized pin is capable, I should have been thoroughly ignorant of such a demonstration.

   • 1863, Louisa May Alcott, “A Postcript” (chapter VI), in Hospital Sketches, Boston: James Redpath, pages 94-95:

     […] and I now imagine "dearest Jane" filling my place, tending the wounds I tended, brushing the curly jungle I brushed, loving the excellent little youth I loved, and eventually walking altarward, with the Sergeant stumping gallantly at her side.

   • c. 1891, Amelia E. Barr, “Marrying and Promise of Marriage” (chapter IV), in Love for an Hour Is Love Forever, New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., page 60:

     On the morning of the wedding, when the church was crowded with guests, Lancelot again saw his love. She was leaning upon the arm of Almund, and stepping altarward to the sound of a noble marriage hymn.

   • 1896, Marion Harland, “Christmas in Bethlehem (Continued)” (chapter XLI), in Home of the Bible: What I Saw and Heard in Palestine, New York City: Bible House, page 376:

     And still the white-veiled women continue to kneel in the aisle, their faces turned altarward, and the motley-hued garments of the men are pressed close together in the body of the church.

   • 2016, Donal Ryan, “Physiotherapy”, in A Slanting of the Sun: Stories, Black Swan Ireland, pages 135-136:

     He left himself out through the front door and went down the avenue to his car that he had parked down there away from the house the way I wouldn’t hear him coming in and he could surprise me, back early from his trip to the north, and the necklace boxed and bowed and held out before him like a thing being taken altarward in an offertory procession and the thorns of the rosebush opened the skin of my hand as I retrieved it from where he’d flung it and the salt of my tears seared in the tiny wounds.