Word.ws English Dictionary

vespers

/ˈvɛspɝz/

vespers noun: the sixth of the seven canonical hours, an evening prayer service. Also the plural of vesper.

Noun

vespers (uncountable)

  1. (plural, plural-only) The sixth of the seven canonical hours, an evening prayer service
  2. (euphemistic) A massacre

Proper noun capitalized: Vespers

Vespers

  1. A Christian service held in the late afternoon or early evening; evensong

Also used as

vespers is also the plural of vesper.

Origin of vespers

From Middle English vespers, from Old French vespres (French vêpres), from Ecclesiastical Latin vesperae (“vespers”), substantivisation of relational Late Latin vesperus (“evening”), from vesper (“evening”) + -us. Euphemistic use first as Vèpres éphésiennes (“Ephesian Vespers”), coined in 1890 by historian Théodore Reinach by analogy with the Sicilian Vespers.

Words formed from vespers

Phrases with vespers

Questions about vespers

What does vespers mean?
Vespers means the sixth of the seven canonical hours, an evening prayer service.
What part of speech is vespers?
Vespers can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce vespers?
Vespers is pronounced /ˈvɛspɝz/ (US).

Words near vespers in the dictionary

  1. vesperates
  2. vesperating
  3. vesperian
  4. vesperies
  5. vespering
  6. vespers
  7. vespertide
  8. vespertilian
  9. vespertilionid
  10. vespertilionids
  11. vespertilionine

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: vespers (page history and authors); Vespers (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Persent101-vespers.wav.

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