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Descant   Listen
noun
Descant  n.  
1.
(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.
2.
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)  
1.
To sing a variation or accomplishment.
2.
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."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Descant" Quotes from Famous Books



... results that one of his friends obtained by certain crosses. So far as the animal kingdom was concerned his ideas were sound enough, but when he came to the consideration of human kind he was as erratic as ever. As they walked back from the stables he began to descant on the population question, denouncing the century, and repeating all his old theories. Perhaps it was jealous rancor that impelled him to protest against the victory of life which the whole farm around him proclaimed so loudly. ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... that same Alessandro del Dardo won her to himself by his descant upon the theme, "How a gentleman may dismember himself without dishonour for a lady's love; and ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... frequent years ago, and where I got my first peep into Chaucer, and Spenser, and Fuller, and Sir Thomas Browne, and other renowned old authors, from whom I now derive so much pleasure and solacement. 'Twas a place where sundry lovers of good books used to meet and descant eloquently and enthusiastically upon the merits and demerits of their favorite authors. I, then a young man, with a most praiseworthy desire of reading "books that are books," but with a most lamentable ignorance of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... measures; slow music, slow movement; adagio &c. adv.; minuet; siren strains, soft music, lullaby; dump; dirge &c. (lament) 839; pibroch[obs3]; martial music, march; dance music; waltz &c. (dance) 840. solo, duet, duo, trio; quartet, quartett[obs3]; septett[obs3]; part song, descant, glee, madrigal, catch, round, chorus, chorale; antiphon[obs3], antiphony; accompaniment, second, bass; score; bourdon[obs3], drone, morceau[obs3], terzetto[obs3]. composer &c. 413; musician &c. 416. V. compose, perform &c. 416; attune. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... Hume, Esq., might, as bookmakers know now, be driven out to a handsome quarto. Line 1st admits of a descant upon eggs roasted, boiled or poached; 2d, a history of Carlisle Cathedral with some reasons why the choir there has been proverbially execrable; 3d, the whole history of 1745 with minute memoirs of such as mounted guard on the Scotch gate. I remember ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott


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