from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- n. Ecclesiastical A sleeved outer vestment reaching to the knees, worn over the alb by a subdeacon or sometimes under the dalmatic by a bishop or cardinal. Also called tunic.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. a small tunic
- n. a vestment worn by an archdeacon
- n. a tunica; a membrane or membranous sheath of skin
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- n. A slight natural covering; an integument.
- n. A short, close-fitting vestment worn by bishops under the dalmatic, and by subdeacons.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A tunic; especially, a fine, thin, or delicate tunic; a slight coat or covering.
- n. Eccles., same as tunic, 3.
For those who would like another view of the vestments, which are simply superb, here is one which shows the subdeacon in tunicle with humeral veil:
The acolyte leads it, vested in tunicle and carrying a processional cross, and two deacons carry the oils to pour into the font.
When the cooper got back to the city, he had the tale of his adventure embroidered on a silken tunicle, which remains today under glass at the Church of St. Leodegar in Lucerne.
At the beginning of the rite, the three major ministers wear amice, alb, and cincture; the priest and deacon also wear black stoles, but none of the three wears either a chasuble of any sort, nor a dalmatic or tunicle.
Part in parcel with that movement was the revival of the conical form of the chasuble and fuller forms of the dalmatic and tunicle; something which was particularly seen (though not exclusively seen) within the monastic context of the Liturgical Movement.
After the Passion, before the Solemn Prayers, the priest, deacon and subdeacon change their vestments; the priest puts on a cope, the deacon and subdeacon put on dalmatic and tunicle.
The priest wears a cope at the beginning, as before; however the deacon and subdeacon do not wear folded chasubles any longer, but rather dalmatic and tunicle.
But in the calendar of the usus antiquior, violet dalmatic and tunicle would have also been used for times such as the pre-Lenten season of Septuagesima.
Further, according to Fortescue, if there were no Rose coloured vestments to use on Gaudete and Laetare Sundays, violet vestments were used on those Sundays instead, including the violet dalmatic and tunicle (p. 245) -- which would be in keeping with the lightened penitential character of those Sundays.
Folded chasubles were not used on the 1st Sunday of Lent, as "according to tradition, Lent begins on the first Monday" (see King, Liturgies of the Primatial Sees, p. 50) and so accordingly on that Sunday (as well as Laetare Sunday) dalmatic and tunicle were worn by the deacon and subdeacon.