VERNAL • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Vernal

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/vˈərnəl/ Listen

adjective

vernal adj.

Of or pertaining to the spring; appearing in the spring; as, vernal bloom. "And purple all the ground with vernal flowers."

Fig.: Belonging to youth, the spring of life. "When after the long vernal day of life." "And seems it hard thy vernal years Few vernal joys can show?"

Vernal equinox (Astron.), the point of time in each year when the sun crosses the equator when proceeding northward, about March 21, when day and night are of approximately equal duration. The beginning of the Spring season.

Vernal grass (Bot.), a low, soft grass (Anthoxanthum odoratum), producing in the spring narrow spikelike panicles, and noted for the delicious fragrance which it gives to new-mown hay; also called sweet vernal grass.

Vernal signs (Astron.), the signs, Aries, Taurus, and Gemini, in which the sun appears between the vernal equinox and summer solstice.

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Etymology of 'Vernal'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Vernal" Quotes from Famous Books

... was a pretty, shady, fancifully laid out garden, with shell-bordered walks, a grotto, a summer-house, and a gate opening into Nicholson Street. Beyond the garden a glimpse was to be caught through the trees of a trim bowling green. It had rained the night before, and a delightful, almost vernal freshness breathed in the air. The bees made a great buzzing amongst the grapes, and the birds in the mulberry-trees sang as though it were nesting time. Mistress Stagg and her old acquaintance sat at a table placed in the shadow of the vines, and sipped their wine, while Audrey obediently gathered ...

— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... the sun shone on him, and he looked at the red blood in his three fingers, as he held them up before his face, he would say, 'Yes, to-day he has been out.' He knew the forest with its beautiful vernal green only from the fact that the neighbor's son brought him the first green branch of a beech-tree, and he held that up over his head, and dreamed he was in the beech wood where the sun shone and the birds sang. On a spring day the neighbor's boy also brought ...

— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... Roman Republic. The Persians hold that this tint was introduced by Kay Kawus (B. C. 600) when mourning for his son Siyawush. It was continued till the death of Husayn on the 10th of Muharram (the first month, then representing the vernal equinox) when it was changed for black. As a rule Moslems do not adopt this symbol of sorrow (called "Hidad") looking upon the practice as somewhat idolatrous and foreign to Arab manners. In Egypt and especially on the Upper Nile women dye their hands ...

— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... work—indeed, there are certain persons who seem to have required the stimulus of necessity to make them break through an initial indolence of nature. When Johnson found fault with Gray for having times of the year when he wrote more easily, from the vernal to the autumnal equinox, he added that a man could write at any time if he set himself doggedly to it. True, no doubt! But to write doggedly is not to court favourable conditions for artistic work. It may be a finer sight for a moralist to see a man performing ...

— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... vernal Heat Shall Old Acquaintance Old Acquaintance greet, Under the Branch that leans above the Wall To shed his ...

— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan

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