VERNAL • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Vernal

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/vˈərnəl/ Listen

adjective

vernal adj.

Of or pertaining to the spring; appearing in the spring; as, vernal bloom. "And purple all the ground with vernal flowers."

Fig.: Belonging to youth, the spring of life. "When after the long vernal day of life." "And seems it hard thy vernal years Few vernal joys can show?"

Vernal equinox (Astron.), the point of time in each year when the sun crosses the equator when proceeding northward, about March 21, when day and night are of approximately equal duration. The beginning of the Spring season.

Vernal grass (Bot.), a low, soft grass (Anthoxanthum odoratum), producing in the spring narrow spikelike panicles, and noted for the delicious fragrance which it gives to new-mown hay; also called sweet vernal grass.

Vernal signs (Astron.), the signs, Aries, Taurus, and Gemini, in which the sun appears between the vernal equinox and summer solstice.

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Etymology of 'Vernal'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Vernal" Quotes from Famous Books

... the vernal breezes! List to the minstrels' strain! 'Tis the poet's song they are singing, And the ...

— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth

... after entering the sign Aries and passing through one eighth of it, determines the vernal equinox. On reaching the tail of Taurus and the constellation of the Pleiades, from which the front half of Taurus projects, he advances into a space greater than half the firmament, moving toward the north. From Taurus he enters Gemini at the time of the ...

— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... Adonis, with the hymeneal Fresh vernal buds half sunk between His youthful curls. [Footnote: ...

— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... Babylonian and Egyptian years appears in the fact that the Babylonian new year dates from about the period of the vernal equinox and not from the solstice. Lockyer associates this with the fact that the periodical inundation of the Tigris and Euphrates occurs about the equinoctial period, whereas, as we have seen, the Nile flood ...

— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... "Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain-awakened flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and ...

— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

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