DESCANT • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Descant

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noun

Descant n.

(Mus.)

(a)

Originally, a double song; a melody or counterpoint sung above the plain song of the tenor; a variation of an air; a variation by ornament of the main subject or plain song.

(b)

The upper voice in part music.

(c)

The canto, cantus, or soprano voice; the treble. "Twenty doctors expound one text twenty ways, as children make descant upon plain song." "She (the nightingale) all night long her amorous descant sung." Note: The term has also been used synonymously with counterpoint, or polyphony, which developed out of the French déchant, of the 12th century.

A discourse formed on its theme, like variations on a musical air; a comment or comments. "Upon that simplest of themes how magnificent a descant!"

verb

Descant v. i. (past & past part. descanted; pres. part. descanting)

To sing a variation or accomplishment.

To comment freely; to discourse with fullness and particularity; to discourse at large. "A virtuous man should be pleased to find people descanting on his actions."

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Etymology of 'Descant'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Descant" Quotes from Famous Books

... groom. My lord, however, had a head man of his own who took the matter quite into his own hands. Mark, priest as he was, was quite worldly enough to be fond of a good horse; and for some little time allowed Lord Lufton to descant on the merit of this four-year-old filly, and that magnificent Rattlebones colt, out of a Mousetrap mare; but he had other things that lay heavy on his mind, and after bestowing half an hour on the stud, he contrived to get his friend away to the ...

— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... Now, having left your hero and heroine in a situation peculiarly interesting, with the greatest nonchalance, pass over to the continent, rave on the summit of Mont Blanc, and descant upon the strata which compose the mountains of the Moon in central Africa. You have been philosophical, now you must be geological. No one can then say that ...

— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... dinner to the king. This was the time when he had meant to bring Melodious message of young Lisa's love; He waited till the air had ceased to move To ringing silver, till Falernian wine Made quickened sense with quietude combine; And then with passionate descant ...

— How Lisa Loved the King • George Eliot

... said enough;] Our minde doth move at others pleasure, and tyed and forced to serve the fantasies of others, being brought under by authoritie, and forced to stoope to the lure of their bare lesson; wee have beene so subjected to harpe upon one string, that we have no way left us to descant upon voluntarie; our vigor and libertie is cleane extinct. Nunquam tutelae suae fiunt: "They never come to their owne tuition." It was my hap to bee familiarlie acquainted with an honest man at Pisa, but such an Aristotelian, as he held this infallible position; ...

— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... progress. We obstinately shut our eyes to the magnitude of the Sphinx question that confronts us, and we address ourselves to one—and that the least important—of its many facets, and content ourselves with tackling that. We descant upon the turpitude of the Teuton who from the regions of idealism in which Goethe, Herder and their contemporaries dwelt has sunk into shift, treason and murder, and we proclaim our faith in the ultimate triumph of right, justice ...

— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

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