VIGIL • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Vigil

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/vˈɪdʒəl/ Listen

noun

Vigil n.

1.

Abstinence from sleep, whether at a time when sleep is customary or not; the act of keeping awake, or the state of being awake; sleeplessness; wakefulness; watch. "Worn out by the labors and vigils of many months." "Nothing wears out a fine face like the vigils of the card table and those cutting passions which attend them."

2.

Hence, devotional watching; waking for prayer, or other religious exercises. "So they in heaven their odes and vigils tuned." "Be sober and keep vigil, The Judge is at the gate."

3.

(Eccl.)

(a)

Originally, the watch kept on the night before a feast.

(b)

Later, the day and the night preceding a feast. "He that shall live this day, and see old age, Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors, And say, "To-morrow is St. Crispian.""

(c)

A religious service performed in the evening preceding a feast.

Vigils of flowers or Watchings of flowers (Bot.), a peculiar faculty belonging to the flowers of certain plants of opening and closing their petals at certain hours of the day. (R.)

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Etymology of 'Vigil'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Vigil" Quotes from Famous Books

... church well known for its cures, which was provided with mattresses or low couches, and attended by priests and assistants. Devotions being finished he lay down to sleep. Sometimes he slept immediately, at other times sleep must be wooed by fast and vigil. At any rate, during the sleep he dreamed that the saint touched him, or prescribed some remedy, and in the first case he awoke cured, and in the second the prescribed medicine brought ...

— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... held converse with magic, methinks, And the future was given to her gaze; For an obelisk marked her abode, and a sphinx On her threshold kept vigil always. She was pensive and ever alone, nor was seen In the haunts of the dissolute crowd; But communed with the ghosts of the Pharaohs, I ween, Or with ...

— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... sits down on a bench. The prospect of a long vigil brings to his mind a well-known room in which at that hour the lamp burns low on a table laden with humming-birds and insects, but that vision passes swiftly through his mind in the chaos of confused thoughts to which the delirium of ...

— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... teasing, monotonous bark of the house-dog disturbed the quietude of their vigil. Caroline rose, and made her way noiselessly through the dark passages to the kitchen, intending to appease him with a piece of bread. She succeeded. On returning to the dining-room she found it all dark, Miss Keeldar having extinguished the candle. The ...

— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... of the house had retired, when the long candle was lighted, when the coffee-kettle was filled, when she sat in the elbow-chair, with her lover on a chair close beside her, and when the vigil of the night was fairly begun, she began to find it wearisome. The young man looked chilly, and ...

— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner

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