(v. i.) 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.
(v. i.) The upper voice in part music.
(v. i.) The canto, cantus, or soprano voice; the treble.
(v. i.) A discourse formed on its theme, like variations on a musical air; a comment or comments.
(v. i.) To sing a variation or accomplishment.
(v. i.) To comment freely; to discourse with fullness and particularity; to discourse at large.
Example Sentences:
(1) Tony Blair added his characteristic descant, adding " We have imbibed deeply of the Olympic spirit … in throwing timidity to the winds we have rediscovered a spirit that is our own ".
(2) In a group of cases in which the symptoms had lasted a few months only a displacement towards high frequencies ("descant" displacement) was revealed.
(3) Hyperbolic”, sings George, while his friend David does descant, and the massed bands of Fleet Street march into battle.
(4) Yet Ukip – from the very beginning – played a racist descant on top of this tune of justifiable grievances.
(5) And yet there's a descant in Perth to the major-key optimism that has marked every SNP conference in the last few years.
(6) It will certainly bring the contest to succeed Mr Cameron closer – that is the loud descant to everything that is happening among the Tories at Westminster at the moment, as Mr Johnson’s antics demonstrate.
(7) Vocal chords will be lubricated with mulled wine and those attempting the dog-whistle Ding Dong descant would do well to consult the pub’s superior malt whisky collection in advance.
(8) Unnoticed by anyone, he maintains a gloomy descant ("A dollar is still a lot of money"; "I've suffered from depression all my life"; "I am dubious") to their falsely cheerful exchanges.
(9) That's why the opening of the Hockney show has been taking place to a not particularly subtle descant of propaganda and provocation from the great man himself.
(10) Indeed, Rona Fairhead, the current chair and once a favoured contributor to George Osborne’s Treasury deliberations, seems as miffed as anyone, while Sir Christopher Bland and Sir Michael Lyons sing transparency’s descant at the back of the chorus.
Discourse
Definition:
(n.) The power of the mind to reason or infer by running, as it were, from one fact or reason to another, and deriving a conclusion; an exercise or act of this power; reasoning; range of reasoning faculty.
(n.) Conversation; talk.
(n.) The art and manner of speaking and conversing.
(n.) Consecutive speech, either written or unwritten, on a given line of thought; speech; treatise; dissertation; sermon, etc.; as, the preacher gave us a long discourse on duty.
(n.) Dealing; transaction.
(v. i.) To exercise reason; to employ the mind in judging and inferring; to reason.
(v. i.) To express one's self in oral discourse; to expose one's views; to talk in a continuous or formal manner; to hold forth; to speak; to converse.
(v. i.) To relate something; to tell.
(v. i.) To treat of something in writing and formally.
(v. t.) To treat of; to expose or set forth in language.
(v. t.) To utter or give forth; to speak.
(v. t.) To talk to; to confer with.
Example Sentences:
(1) Patients' and therapists' discourses can be analysed from tape recordings or from their responses to open-ended questions.
(2) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bill Shorten backs prospect of Indigenous treaty to ‘move beyond constitutional recognition’ At a press conference, Turnbull rebuked Shorten for his lack of “discipline” on Q&A, which is, after all, the home of reasoned and reasonable political discourse.
(3) This is understandable: marital rape has not been a part of India’s discourse.
(4) We still have at our disposal the rational interpretive skills that are the legacy of humanistic education, not as a sentimental piety enjoining us to return to traditional values or the classics but as the active practice of worldly secular rational discourse.
(5) Derived patterns of discourse between female adults and preschool children confirmed expectations that most discourse is based upon three fundamental speech act pairings: question--answer, statement--reply, and directive--acknowledgement.
(6) In light of the AIDS epidemic and the necessity for safe-sex practices, the topic of caution and prevention is an emerging and critical discourse for the sexual encounter.
(7) He might begin with a call for an end to all foreign wars, segue to demand the legalisation of drugs, throw in a defence of WikiLeaks and end with a detailed economic discourse on why the Federal Reserve must be abolished and replaced by the gold standard.
(8) Three-quarters of the sample was impaired on at least one of four discourse tests (knowing the alternate meanings of ambiguous words in context; getting the point of figurative or metaphoric expressions; bridging the inferential gaps between events in stereotyped social situations; and producing speech acts that express the apparent intentions of others).
(9) I support the boycott discourse, but in order to develop this discourse, we need highly developed political consciousness.
(10) Other significant differences in discourse occurred between the two groups, but these varied from task to task.
(11) He was not in the mood for elaboration, with abundant short answers and uptight reactions to the topics that were suggested for discourse.
(12) I quoted Cooke because, as he himself suggests, what he wrote is a pure distillation of a widely held view in US political discourse.
(13) That’s the danger of replacing the political discourse with a purely moralistic approach: politics allow for nuances and mistakes; morality doesn’t.
(14) Discourse passages and consonant nonsense syllables, presented in quiet and in noise, were used as the test conditions.
(15) And the discourse of those that are committing these crimes – they are not hiding these crimes, they are saying it very openly, very publicly, very systematically … and it’s not just rhetoric – the action they take is to implement the rhetoric.
(16) Powell told the Association of Teachers and Lecturers’ annual conference in Liverpool on Monday: “I think my approach to these issues in parliament is going to be about making and winning the argument rather than a sort of ‘yah-boo’ traditional political discourse, because I don’t think that is going to enable us to develop that broader alliance.
(17) Manic patients produced thought disorders that revealed both prominent combinatory thinking and intrusions of irrelevant ideas into the stream of discourse, usually with flippancy and humor.
(18) There are rationalisations but very little actual discourse on the subject of banning assault weapons.
(19) Each lesson focuses on a different viseme which is practiced using the 'discourse tracking' method.
(20) Preliminary data from our single-case studies suggest discourse patterns similar to those reported for adults with frontal lobe injuries.