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vigil

vigil is defined in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1913) with 2 senses. The full text of each entry is reproduced verbatim below.

Definitions

  1. 1.Hence, devotional watching; waking for prayer, or other religious exercises. So they in heaven their odes and vigils tuned. Milton. Be sober and keep vigil, The Judge is at the gate. Neale (Rhythm of St. Bernard).
  2. 2.(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." Shak. (c) A religious service performed in the evening preceding a feast. Vigils, or Watchings, of flowers (Bot.), a peculiar faculty belonging to the flowers of certain plants of opening and closing their petals as certain hours of the day. [R.]

Source: Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 edition (public domain, via GCIDE / Project Gutenberg).

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