Alba

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. A term often used to refer to dawn or the first light of day in various languages; it may also denote a specific type of poetic composition that expresses themes of morning light
2. This word is commonly associated with the early part of the day when night transitions into daylight; it can also describe a lyrical performance centered around this time
3. Typically related to the break of day in poetic contexts, it signifies both the visual aspects of dawn and the cultural connotations of morning and renewal

Etymology: "Alba" is a word with several unrelated lives in English, all traceable to the Latin adjective "albus," meaning "white." The poetic sense, a dawn song or the dawn itself, came in 1821 by way of Occitan "alba," which was the name for a medieval Provençal lyric about lovers parting at daybreak. Spanish "alba" carries the same sense of dawn, and English borrowed the word for the time of day it names. Its other uses are older in Latin but later in English. The white garment worn by clergy, the "alb," reached Ecclesiastical Latin as "alba," meaning "white tunic," and the English word "alb" is a doublet of it: two forms of one source that entered English separately. The rose sense is different again. In 1848, botanists in binomial nomenclature used the Latin feminine "alba," "white," in the species name Rosa alba, a name now considered outdated because the plant is a hybrid, now written Rosa × alba.

Synonyms: white, dawn, daybreak, morning, light

Antonyms: darkness, night, dusk, twilight, gloaming