Saturday, August 21, 2010

Words of the day!

Crepuscular vs. Vespertine
Crepuscular refers to the night time creatures, (nocturnal ones too!)
Diurnal refers to creatures like humans-awake by day, asleep by night.
Vespertine is a biological term referring to anything natural (flowering, blooming, prowling) in the twilight.

Those are the words of the day.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I don't mean to be a dick, but I'm going to anyway because I was thinking about this very term the other day and I looked it up. Must be in the zeitgeist.

Crepuscular refers to animals that are active during twilight(dawn and dusk) Rabbits are a good example of crepuscular animals, dogs too according to Wikipedia, though that's news to me. Crepuscular is sort of interchangeable with "vespertine," though it refers to both the morning and evening whereas vespertine refers exclusively to evening twilight. Crepuscular and nocturnal are not interchangeable as you state.

This important distinction has been brought to you by Mark

Anonymous said...

There's a nice Thelonious Monk tune called 'Crepuscule with Nellie' (crepuscule - the time of day immediately following sunset).

And I have Bjork's 'Vespertine' album.

I've never looked the words up before, and I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned Monk and Bjork in the same breath.

Anonymous said...

i did not know this meaning for vespertine!!!