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General Category => Words => Topic started by: Jacki on May 28, 2020, 11:15:30 AM

Title: Vesper
Post by: Jacki on May 28, 2020, 11:15:30 AM
In Wednesday's Standard game, seed word PERVASIVE, I played Vesper and it's not common, and I always seem to forget this. Although after writing this post it will probably help me to remember it is not common! And yet I think VESPERS is common.  When you press on the word for the meaning it says the bell that  summons worshippers to vespers, the vesper bell.
Title: Re: Vesper
Post by: TRex on May 29, 2020, 01:30:58 AM
Seems correct to me. According to Ngram Viewer (https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=vesper%2CVesper%2Cvespers%2CVespers&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cvesper%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2CVesper%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cvespers%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2CVespers%3B%2Cc0) with an 's' on the end (whether with an initial cap or not) is more common than without it.
Title: Re: Vesper
Post by: Jacki on May 29, 2020, 09:42:03 AM
Oh yes I'm not saying it's not correct. I'm just rambling really about how I keep playing the word and then kick myself. Vesper sounds like the motorcycle too, although I think that's spelt Vespa?
Title: Re: Vesper
Post by: mkenuk on May 29, 2020, 01:54:55 PM
Vespa in Italian means wasp.

Probably somebody at the time thought that the sound of the scooter resembled the buzzing of a wasp.

Vesper on the other hand is Latin for 'Evening Star'. Vespers in the old church schedule were the prayers said in the early evening, roughly the time that the 'star' appeared in the sky.
Title: Re: Vesper
Post by: birdy on June 19, 2020, 06:35:25 AM
I'm more familiar with the plural form - because of the church service schedule - than the singular, though I do know the word as part of the common name of the vesper sparrow.
Title: Re: Vesper
Post by: Calilasseia on June 24, 2020, 06:41:53 PM
I encountered vespers via a roundabout route involving the musical work of that name by Rachmaninov ...
Title: Re: Vesper
Post by: TRex on June 25, 2020, 10:17:51 AM
I encountered vespers via a roundabout route involving the musical work of that name by Rachmaninov ...

Which is actually a mis-name — Rachmaninoff (his preferred spelling in Latin characters) wrote the All-Night Vigil. Unfortunately, too many places it is misidentified as 'Vespers'.
Title: Re: Vesper
Post by: Calilasseia on June 26, 2020, 10:58:49 AM
I encountered vespers via a roundabout route involving the musical work of that name by Rachmaninov ...

Which is actually a mis-name — Rachmaninoff (his preferred spelling in Latin characters) wrote the All-Night Vigil. Unfortunately, too many places it is misidentified as 'Vespers'.

The full work is indeed the All Night Chant, and is in fifteen parts. However, the first six parts thereof contain the Russian Orthodox text for Vespers in that denomination. Hence the frequent reference to the work via that name.

One fact that I was blissfully unaware of until now, is that Part Six of the All Night Vigil (the last part of the Vespers proper, if you will), was reworked into an anti-Putin protest song by the Russian punk group Pussy Riot.
Title: Re: Vesper
Post by: TRex on June 26, 2020, 10:23:53 PM
I encountered vespers via a roundabout route involving the musical work of that name by Rachmaninov ...

Which is actually a mis-name — Rachmaninoff (his preferred spelling in Latin characters) wrote the All-Night Vigil. Unfortunately, too many places it is misidentified as 'Vespers'.

The full work is indeed the All Night Chant, and is in fifteen parts. However, the first six parts thereof contain the Russian Orthodox text for Vespers in that denomination. Hence the frequent reference to the work via that name.

Except the Russian Orthodox Church does not do 'Vespers' in isolation — it does the All-Night Vigil.