a. and sb. [ad. late L. vesperāl-is, f. L. vespera: see prec. Cf. F. vesperal sb.]
A. adj. a. Vespertinal, vespertine. b. Pertaining to vespers or the vesper-bell. rare.
1623. Cockeram, I. Vesperall, of or belonging to the euening. [Hence in Blount.]
1827. Carlyle, Germ. Rom., III. 135. Amid the vesperal melodies of the steeple sounding-holes.
B. sb. 1. Eccl. An office-book containing the psalms, canticles, anthems, etc., with their musical settings, used at vespers; an antiphonary containing the vesper-chants.
1869. Life of Marg. M. Hallahan (1870), 431. They were presented with a Vesperal and Processional.
1884. Grove’s Dict. Music, IV. 257. The most correct Vesperals now in print are those published at Mechlin in 1870, and at Ratisbon in 1875.
2. An evening song.
In quot. as the title of a poem.
1896. E. Dowson, Verses, 39. Vesperal. ‘Strange grows the river on the sunless evenings!’
