See descant on Wiktionary
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"A counterpoint melody sung or played above the theme."
],
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"played",
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],
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"(music) A counterpoint melody sung or played above the theme."
],
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"music"
],
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{
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"code": "fr",
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"lang_code": "fr",
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},
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}
]
}
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"text": "[B]ut shun the establishment of a bachelor who has hung a pendulum between temptation and prudence till the age of———but of all subjects, age is the one on which it is most invidious to descant.",
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},
{
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}
],
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],
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"(intransitive) To discuss at length."
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"To sing or play a descant."
],
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"(intransitive, music) To sing or play a descant."
],
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"A lengthy discourse on a subject."
],
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"A counterpoint melody sung or played above the theme."
],
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],
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],
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"(music) A counterpoint melody sung or played above the theme."
],
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"music"
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}
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],
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}
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"text": "[…] Samballat gaue his daughter Nicaſo to Manaſſes, the brother of Iaddus the High Prieſt, in the time of Darius the laſt Perſian Monarch. This Nehemia mentioneth, but deigneth not to name him, affirming that he chaſed him from him, of vvhich ſome deſcant vvhether it vvere by exile, or excommunication, or ſome other puniſhment.",
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"type": "quotation"
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{
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144
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"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1919, Ronald Firbank, Valmouth, Duckworth, page 121",
"text": "Involving some interesting, intellectual trips, she was descanting lightly to right and left."
}
],
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"To discuss at length."
],
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],
[
"at length",
"at length"
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],
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"(intransitive) To discuss at length."
],
"tags": [
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]
},
{
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],
"glosses": [
"To sing or play a descant."
],
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],
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"(intransitive, music) To sing or play a descant."
],
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"intransitive"
],
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"lifestyle",
"music"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
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]
},
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"tags": [
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{
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"translations": [
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"lang_code": "fr",
"sense": "to sing or play a descant",
"word": "déchanter"
}
],
"word": "descant"
}
Download raw JSONL data for descant meaning in All languages combined (7.7kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-09-25 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-09-02 using wiktextract (1a05e46 and e3d6d4e). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.