descant

Estimated CEFR level: C2 — Proficiency

Estimated from word frequency; not an official CEFR classification.

Definition

noun a decorative musical accompaniment (often improvised) added above a basic melody
verb sing in descant
verb sing by changing register; sing by yodeling

From Anglo-Norman descaunt, from Medieval Latin discantus. Doublet of discant.

=Your descants ... this ground.= There is a complicated play on words here. — Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois, George Chapman
The last chapter of the Urn Burial is an almost rhythmical descant on mortality and oblivion. — From Chaucer to Tennyson: With Twenty-Nine Portraits and Selections from Thirty Authors, Henry A. (Henry Augustin) Beers
Though rendered less connected by many and general interruptions and outbreakings, a translation of their language would have contained a regular descant, which, in substance, might have proved to possess a train of consecutive ideas. — The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757, James Fenimore Cooper

discant

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