Sunday Word: Aubade
aubade [oh-bad, oh-bahd; French oh-bad]
noun:
1 a song or instrumental composition concerning, accompanying, or evoking daybreak.
2 a poem or song of or about lovers separating at dawn.
Examples:
The celebration ended with an aubade performed by 20 children aged between five and 12, dressed in traditional clothes singing national and regional anthems. (Adib Noor, Maintain unity and solidarity, Indonesians told, Borneo Bulletin, August 2022)
My own sense is that Hoagland is alluding to another, older gesture in poetry, the gesture of embrace, eros, and grief - the gesture of, for instance, an aubade. He uses the imperative not to dominate, but to invite. (Ailish Hopper, Can a Poem Listen?, Boston Review, April 2015)
Through the lens of Lannis Waters, sunrise over Palm Beach becomes the visual equivalent of an aubade - a song or poem to greet the dawn. (Sunrise photos lit up Palm Beach over the years, Palm Beach Daily News, April 2022)
Sweet as any aubade of the olden time, under olive and ilex, is it not? (Augusta J Evans Wilson, A Speckled Bird)
He remembered that Alain was supposed to sing an aubade, a dawn song, in the street below to warn and rouse him. (Robert Shea, The Saracen: Land of the Infidel)
Origin:
'song to be performed in open air in the early morning, musical announcement of dawn,' 1670s, from French aubade 'dawn' (15c), from Provençal aubada, from auba 'dawn', from Latin alba, feminine of albus 'white' (Online Etymology Dictionary)
Aubade is a French word that first romanced speakers of the English language during the 1670s. In French it means 'dawn serenade', and that is the meaning that English-speakers originally fell in love with. As the relationship of 'aubade' with the English language grew, its meanings became a little more intimate. It blossomed into a word for a song or poem of lovers parting at dawn. Later it came to refer to songs sung in the morning hours. The affair between 'aubade' and the dawn began with the Old Occitan word auba, meaning 'dawn'. Auba itself is believed to come from Latin albus, meaning 'white'. (Merriam-Webster)