Canon

Canon. 1. Those books of Scripture universally recognised as genuine and inspired, as distinguished from those which are apocryphal or disputed. 2. The name of a church dignitary connected with a cathedral; formerly canons were regular and secular, the latter living a non-monastic life, the former a strictly monastic. The regular canons no longer exist in the Church of England. Together with the dean the canons form the chapter of a cathedral. Minor canons and honorary canons are not included in the chapter. 3. A kind of musical composition, in which the voices take up, one after another, exactly the same melody, either at the same pitch or at a fixed interval.