vespertine

Pronounced: VESS-per-tine, adj

Notes: I should have known this word, but I just saw in it a relative of “serpentine”

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Yesterday’s word

The word quodlibetal means “relating to a question or topic for debate or discussion”

First usage

Our word came into English in the late 1500s

Background / Comments

As I noted yesterday, I was thrown off the correct track because I have run across the word quodlibet in a difference context. A musical humorist named Peter Schickele created a fictional youngest son of J S Bach called “P D Q Bach” and writes various humorous music attributed to this person. If you enjoy music-based humor, you should look it up. One of his compositions is called “The Quodlibet” — until our word came up, I thought that this was just a made-up Latin-sounding word. I have looked it up, and the word has an actual musical meaning: a musical composition that combines several different melodies (usually popular tunes) in counterpoint and often in a light-hearted, humorous manner”. The first Peter Schickele work I heard is called “The Unbegun Symphony”, which Peter Schickele said he “wrote”. In the introduction, he explained that the symphony only has a 3rd and 4th movement because he was born too late to write the 1st and 2nd movements. He also said that his old friends called it “The Pathetic Symphony”, but he acquired a new set of friends and it is now called “The Unbegun Symphony”. Getting back to our word, it comes from the Latin word quodlibetum (whatever pleases), from quod (what) and libet (it pleases). It had an earlier meaning of a mock exercise in discussion or debate. As a final note, our word is one of those that contain all the common vowels, but not in order.