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What is the technical word for "active in the morning" on the pattern of "diurnal" (day); "nocturnal" (night) and "crespuscular" (evening)?
Last edited by Hydra; 12/04/06 10:54 AM.
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Doesn't crepuscular (one s) cover both dawn and dusk?
(scurrying to OneLook..)
2. Zoology Becoming active at twilight or before sunrise, as do bats and certain insects and birds. [AHD4]
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That's what I thought too. But here's how I came to ask: the definition for crepuscular is "appearing or active in twilight." The definition for twilight is "the soft glowing light from the sky when the sun is below the horizon, caused by the refraction and scattering of the sun's rays from the atmosphere; the period of the evening during which this takes place." Now, I know as well as you do that "twilight" means between day and night, whether that is dusk or dawn. But when the dictionary specifies otherwise, you begin to question what you'd formerly taken for granted, and wonder if what had seemed obvious and universally agreed upon was rather a common misconception—such as the idea that "people only use 10 per cent of their brains" (untrue).
Am I splitting hairs here?
Last edited by Hydra; 12/04/06 04:40 PM.
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Quote:
What is the technical word for "active in the morning" on the pattern of "diurnal" (day); "nocturnal" (night) and "crespuscular" (evening)?
My first thought was of "auroral" and the Old Webster gives this as
acceptable.
Last edited by BranShea; 12/04/06 01:33 PM.
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matinal is what you are looking for, but matutinal is also in the OED, and even "matitudinal" yields 190 Google hits..
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well, I go back to the AHD def'n of crepuscular, "at twilight or before sunrise."
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To me, twilight's evening only; pre-dawn (in addition to the terms above) is morning.
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Quote:
To me, twilight's evening only; pre-dawn (in addition to the terms above) is morning.
and I'm not disputing that -- I'm merely giving one def'n for crepuscular.
How about this? : Within the definition of crepuscular are the terms matinal (or "matutinal") and vespertine, denoting animals active in the morning (dawn) and evening (dusk) respectively.
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matinal ... and vespertine Named for the church services, or were the church services named for the time of day? (In other words, which came first?)
[complete aside] They must be firing the big guns at Ft. Knox again. Maybe they got some new ones, or maybe the atmospheric conditions are carrying the reverberations more than usual. Last Sat. morning, our deck was vibrating to it...and Ft. Knox is thirty miles away. But I'm hearing the muffled booms, even now.
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old hand
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denoting animals active in the morning (dawn) and evening (dusk) - conclusion: matinal is more specific for morning (of course this will not be the last word  ).
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