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  1. quodlibet love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A theological or philosophical issue presented for formal argument or disputation.
  2. n. Formal disputation of such an issue.
  3. n. Music A usually humorous medley.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. A scholastic argumentation upon a subject chosen at will, but almost always theological. These are generally the most elaborate and subtle of the works of the scholastic doctors. There are about a dozen printed books of quodlibets, all written between 1250 and 1350.
  2. n. In music: A fantasia or potpourri.
  3. n. A fanciful or humorous harmonic combination of two or more well-known melodies: sometimes equivalent to a Dutch concert.

Wiktionary

  1. n. music A form of music with melodies in counterpoint.
  2. n. philosophy A mode of philosophical debate popular in the Middle Ages, in which any question could be posed extemporaneously.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. A nice point; a subtilty; a debatable point.
  2. n. (Mus.) A medley improvised by several performers.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. an issue that is presented for formal disputation

Etymologies

  1. Middle English, from Medieval Latin quodlibetum, from Latin quod libet, anything at all : quod, what; see kwo- in Indo-European roots + libet, it pleases, third person sing. present tense of libēre, to be pleasing; see leubh- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “The apostles also confuted the heathen philosophers and Jews, a people than whom none more obstinate, but rather by their good lives and miracles than syllogisms: and yet there was scarce one among them that was capable of understanding the least "quodlibet" of the Scotists.”

    The Praise of Folly

  • “Ex falso sequitur quodlibet, from a false hypothesis anything can follow, likewise sums up your own m.o. all too well and all too frequently; whether subtly or more overtly and more arrogantly still; distorting what others say, then adding the pointed barb and the tacit, the barely unspoken “fuck-off”.”

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Our Own Randy Barnett Talks to Prof. Glenn Reynolds (InstaPundit) About Whether ObamaCare Is Constitutional

  • “Johannes Brassicanus quoted three of them in his quodlibet Was wölln wir aber heben an?”

    Archive 2009-06-01

  • “Bruck's style in the German sacred lied shows the move towards the later motet-style settings of chorales, but his greatest achievements were in polyphonic arrangements of German folksongs and court melodies, as well as in the quodlibet.”

    Archive 2009-06-01

  • “Occasionally, a sufficiently serious religious news item appears that I find it necessary to eschew irony in order to assess, in a serious and sober way, the exigent theological quodlibet.”

    Anjem Choudary and donkeys « Anglican Samizdat

  • “This sort of serendipity goes way back, of course — think of Clément Janequin's "Les cris de Paris," a quodlibet of 16th-century vendors 'cries; In the 19th century, there was a bit of a vogue for the combination of worldly concerns and overheard church music, Schumann's song "Sonntags am Rhine" being a gorgeous example.”

    Archive 2007-06-01

  • “An impossible world of the fourth kind, at which some contradiction is true but not everything is, provides a counterexample to ex falso quodlibet.”

    Impossible Worlds

  • “Forgive me, quick-witted reader, if this quodlibet to Q has made you querimonious; I'll leave the letter and return to Q, the woman, after I tax you with one more notion.”

    The Wall Street Journal: 'Roads to Quoz'

  • “Then someone may turn out to be both a married man and a bachelor, therefore, given the meaning of bachelor™, both a married man and not a married man (and, of course, nobody would infer from this that he is not a man anymore, or both a man and not a man, etc.; so we have another counterexample to ex contradictione quodlibet).”

    Dialetheism

  • “Nevertheless -- a fun idea for a quodlibet! deadsongs. vue.77”

    The WELL: Franklin's Tower

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synonyms (1)

Words with the same meaning

  1. subtilty

hypernyms (1)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. issue

same context (24)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. suscipit
  2. istorum
  3. pedum
  4. defendendum
  1. dentica
  2. rex
  3. herbam
  4. quodque
  1. commodi
  2. medica
  3. nascentem
  4. artium
  1. supremi
  2. virtuti
  3. contrac
  4. amittere
  1. habeus
  2. cognoscit
  3. arbitratus
  4. poneret
  1. pontifex
  2. exitus
  3. quot
  4. decenter

reverse dictionary (1)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. quidlibet

tags (2)

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  1. music
  1. Dutch concert

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  • fbharjo A nice point; a subtilty; a debatable point.( GNU Websters) ..... anything pleasing - literally, perhaps? Aug 23, 2012

  • super-kawy "A quodlibet is a piece of music combining several different melodies, usually popular tunes, in counterpoint and often a light-hearted, humorous manner." May 30, 2009

  • mialuthien quodlibet – "what you like"; moot or subtle point; fruitless or pedantic argument (from the Hutchinson Encyclopaedia) Jul 21, 2008

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‘quodlibet’ has been looked up 8960 times, loved by 3 people, added to 35 lists, commented on 3 times, and has a Scrabble score of 21.