The period of Vedanta; lit. ‘end of the Veda’:

• vedanta (m.): end of the Veda (=‘complete knowledge of the Veda’, cf. vedanta-ga; [viz.: ‘one who has gone to the end of the Veda or who has complete knowledge of the Veda; a follower of the Vedanta’]); name of the second and most important part of the Mimamsa or third of the three great divisions of Hindu philosophy (called Vedanta either as teaching the ultimate scope of the Veda or simply as explained in the Upanishads which come at the end of the Veda; this system, although belonging to the Mimamsa q.v. [viz.: ‘name of one of the 3 great divisions of orthodox Hindu philosophy’], and sometimes called Uttara-mimamsa, ‘examination of the later portion or jnana-kanda, q.v. [viz.: ‘that portion of the Veda which relates to knowledge of the one Spirit’], of the Veda’, is really the one sole orthodox exponent of the pantheistic creed of the Hindus of the present day – a creed which underlies all the polytheism and multiform mythology of the people; its chief doctrine as expounded by Samkaracarya, is that of Advaita i.e. that nothing really exists but the One Self or Soul of the Universe called Brahman neut., or Paramatman, and that the Jivatman or individual human soul and indeed all the phenomena of nature are really identical with the Paramatman, and that their existence is only the result of Ajnana otherwise called avidya, or an assumed ignorance on the part of that one universal Soul which is described as both Creator and Creation; (...); the liberation of the human soul, its deliverance from transmigrations, and re-union with the Paramatman, with which it is really identified, is only to be effected by a removal of that ignorance through a proper understanding of the Vedanta; this system is also called Brahma-mimamsa and Sarirakamimamsa, ‘inquiring into Spirit or embodied Spirit’; the founder of the school is said to have been Vyasa, also called Badarayana, and its most eminent teacher was Samkaracarya); (m. pl.): the Upanishads or works on the Vedanta philosophy. ~ (Monier Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary).

videographer (n.): a person involved in the production of video material ⁽⁰¹⁾; videographers shoot the images with a video camera⁽⁰²⁾ (digital or analogue) and may perform minimal or extensive editing of the resulting footage. ~ (The Computer Language Company Inc).

⁽⁰¹⁾videography (n.): the art or practice of using a video camera; (n.): videographer. ~ (American Heritage Dictionary).

⁽⁰²⁾videographer (n.): a person who makes videotapes with a camcorder. [1970-75; derived from photographer]. ~ (Webster’s College Dictionary).

• vignettist (n.): a maker of vignettes; an artist who devotes his attention to vignettes; [e.g.]: “The March number of “Le Livre” opens with a singularly interesting paper upon Viollet-le-Duc as a vignettist. That the famous architect and author of the great “Dictionary of French Architecture” ever undertook work of this class is not generally known”. (page 260, “Notes and Queries”, Jan-Jun, 1887, 7th Series, Vol. III.). [from vignette + -ist]. (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia).

• vignettist (n.): a person who makes vignettes; a vignetter {!sic!; vignetter=a mask used in printing vignette photographs; any device for causing the edges of a printed part of a photographic negative to fade away evenly and gradually into the background}. [curly bracketed insert added] ~ (Wiktionary English Dictionary).

• vignettist (n.): a maker of vignettes; see vignette⁽*⁾. [formed within English, by derivation, from vignette, noun + -ist, suffix; the earliest known use of the noun vignettist is in the 1880s; OED’s earliest evidence for vignettist is 1884 in the writing of Sir Frederick Wedmore (1844-1921), a British art critic and man of letters]. ~ (Oxford English Dictionary).

⁽*⁾vignette (n.): a short piece of writing or acting which clearly shows what a particular person, situation, etc. is like; [e.g.]: “a charming vignette of Edwardian life”; 2. a small picture or drawing, especially on the first page of a book; [e.g.]: “Each vignette represents one of the four seasons”. [origin: late Middle English (in second definition; also as an architectural term denoting a carved representation of a vine): from French, diminutive of vigne, ‘vine’]. ~ (Oxford English Dictionary).

• vignette (n.): 1. a running ornament of vine-leaves, tendrils, and grapes, as in architecture; 2. the flourishes in the form of vine-leaves, branches, etc., with which capital letters in manuscripts are sometimes surrounded; 3. (in printing): the engraved illustration or decoration which precedes a title-page or the beginning of a chapter: so called because many of the cuts first made for books in France were inclosed with a border of the general character of trailing vines; 4. hence, any image or picture; a cut or illustration; [e.g.]: “Her imagination was full of pictures... divine vignettes of mild spring or mellow autumn moments”. (Charlotte Brontë, “Shirley”, x.); “Assisi, in the January twilight, looked like a vignette out of some brown old missal”. (Henry James, Jr., “Transatlantic Sketches”, p. 213); “In bright vignettes, and each complete, | Of tower or duomo, sunny-sweet, | Or palace, how the city glittered!”. (Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Daisy”); 5. a photographic portrait showing only the head, or the head and shoulders, and so printed that the ground shades off insensibly around the subject into an even colour, which may be that of the untreated paper, or a more or less dark shade produced by a separate operation; hence, any picture, not a portrait, treated in the same way. [formerly also vignett; from French vignette, diminutive of vigne, ‘vineyard’, ‘vine’, from Latin vinea, ‘a vine’; see vine]. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia).

• vignette (tr.v.; pret. and pp. vignetted, ppr. vignetting): (in photography): to treat or produce, as a portrait, in the style of a vignette. [from vignette, noun]. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia).

• vignetter (n.): (in photography): any device for causing the edges of a printed part of a negative to fade away evenly and gradually into the background; a form of vignetter may be interposed between the camera and the subject, so that the portrait will be vignetted directly on the negative; see vignetting-glass and vignetting-paper. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia).

• vignetting-glass (n.): (in photography): a glass frame for the same use and made on the same principles as the vignetting-paper; a usual form has an aperture of clear glass in the middle, around which are carried thin layers of tissue-paper, every layer projecting a little beyond that placed upon it; another form is of deep-orange glass, with a centre of white glass, the gradation being effected by grinding away the edge of the encircling orange part; also called vignetter. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia).

• vignetting-mask (n.): same as vignetting-paper (below). ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia).

• vignetting-paper (n.): (in photography): a mask used in printing vignette pictures; it is a sheet of thin paper with a piece of the desired size left clear and semi-transparent in the middle, proceeding from which shading is carried in an opaque colour so as gradually to attain complete opacity, and thus cause the strongly printed part of the negative in the middle to fade by even gradation around its edge to the colour of the unprinted paper; also called vignetter and vignetting-mask. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia).

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Synonyms: defame, run down, impugn, revile, berate, denigrate, disparage, speak ill of, cast aspersions at, decry, denounce, fulminate against, malign, slander, libel, conduct a smear campaign against, blacken the name/ reputation of, calumniate, traduce; inf. badmouth, do a hatchet job on, pull to pieces, throw mud at, drag through the mud. ~ (©Oxford Dictionary).

• vilipendency (n.; formal): disesteem; slight; disparagement; [e.g.]: “The mighty Goliaths of Rome, by this way of vilipendency hope to give our clergy’s flesh to be food for the fowls of the air”. (page 149, “A humble Apologie for Learning and Learned Men”, by Edward Waterhouse; 1653). ~ (Wiktionary English Dictionary).

• vilipendency (n.; not in use): disesteem; slight. ~ (Webster’s 1828 Dictionary).

• vilipendency (n.): disesteem; slight; disparagement. ~ (Webster’s 1913 Dictionary).

• vilipendency (n.): disesteem; slight; disparagement (Bishop Hackett). [from Latin vilipenden(t-)s, ppr. of vilipendere; see vilipend⁽*⁾ + -cy]. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia).

⁽*⁾vilipend (v.): I. (tr.v.): to express a disparaging or mean opinion of; slander; vilify; treat slightingly or contemptuously; [e.g.]: “It is wicked to sell heavenly things at a great rate of worldly; but it is most wretched to vilipend them”. (Rev. Thomas Adams, 1583-1652, “The Works”, I. 6); “Though I would by no means vilipend the study of the classicks”. (James Russell Lowell, 1819-1891, “The Biglow Papers”, 2d ser., i); II. (intr.v.): to express disparaging opinions of a person; use vilification; [e.g.]: “It is profane and foolish to deify public opinion, or indeed anything; but it is not right, it is not safe to err on the other side, to ignore and vilipend it”. (Dr. John Brown, “Spare Hours”, 3d ser., p. 154). [from French vilipender = Italian vilipendere (cf. Spanish vilipendiar, from vilipendio, noun), Latin vilipendere, ‘hold of slight value’, ‘deprecate’, ‘deprive’, from vilis, ‘of small price’ + pendere, ‘weigh’, ‘weigh out’; see vile and pendent]. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia).

• vilipend (tr.v.; vilipended, vilipending, vilipends; archaic): 1. to view or treat with contempt; despise; 2. to speak ill of; disparage. [Middle English vilipenden, from Old French vilipender, from Latin vīlipendere, from vīlis, ‘worthless’ + pendere, ‘to consider’, ‘weigh’]. ~ (American Heritage Dictionary).

• vilipend (tr.v.): 1. to treat or regard with contempt; 2. to speak slanderously or slightingly of; (n.): vilipender. [C15: from Late Latin vīlipendere, from Latin vīlis, ‘worthless’ + pendere, ‘to esteem’]. ~ (Collins English Dictionary).

• vilipend (tr.v.): 1. to regard or treat as of little value or account; 2. to vilify; depreciate. [1425-75; late Middle English from Late Latin vīlipendere, from Latin vīli(s), ‘cheap’ (see vile) + pendere, ‘to consider’]. ~ (Webster’s College Dictionary).

• vilipend (v.): belittle; [e.g.]: “The teacher really shouldn’t vilipend the student’s efforts”; (synonyms): depreciate, deprecate; (related words): disparage, belittle, pick at (express a negative opinion of); [e.g.]: “She disparaged her student’s efforts”; deflate, puncture (reduce or lessen the size or importance of); [e.g.]: “The bad review of his work deflated his self-confidence”. ~ (Princeton’s WordNet 3.0).

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• “It is fitting that Gilbert Gadoffre’s monumental work on the birth of cultural projects, ‘La Revolution culturelle dans la France des humanistes’ {=‘The Cultural Revolution in Humanist France’}, ends with studies of the metamorphoses of the ‘persona France’ and the construction of French identity. France was alone in ‘offering the spectacle of a country which knew how to unite the spirit of the warrior to the taste for letters, a paradoxical association that the Valois {i.e., a French ruling dynasty, 1328-1589, which succeeded the Capetian line when Philip VI ascended to the throne; regnate 1328-1350} were best able to exemplify’. The prosopopeia {i.e., a figure of speech in which an absent or imaginary person is represented as speaking; another word for personification} of France combines the traits of Ceres, Minerva, and Pallas. Later, in war, she becomes the woman, sullied by her subjects, who vilipends them in order to inspire unity in the midst of strife. The same ‘afflicted mother’ nonetheless bears evidence of a new identification of French culture. As is suggested in the final chapter, she prompts humanists and subjects to imagine a genealogy which rehearses the beginnings of civilisation. She is part of a ‘conversion of France to a convivial humanism’ and to a topic, now occupying sociologists and historians of different stripe, concerning the history of French universalism...”. [italics and curly-bracketed inserts added]. ~ (Tom Conley; Sep 22, 1999; Renaissance Quarterly).

villein or villain (n.): (in medieval Europe) a peasant personally bound to his lord, to whom he paid dues and services, sometimes commuted to rents, in return for his land; cf. churl ⁽⁰²⁾. [C14: from Old French vilein, ‘serf’, from Late Latin vīllānus, ‘worker on a country estate’, from Latin villa; related to Latin vīcus, ‘a village’]. ~ (Collins English Dictionary).

That is so in essence or effect, although not recognised formally, actually, or by strict definition as such; almost absolute. Possessed of certain physical virtues or powers; effective in respect of inherent qualities. Capable of producing a certain effect or result’. ~ (Oxford Dictionary).

visceral (adj.): relating to deep inward feelings rather than to the intellect; [e.g.]: ‘the voters’ visceral fear of change’; (adv): viscerally. ~ (Oxford Dictionary).

visceral (adj.): characterised by intuition or instinct rather than intellect; (adv.): viscerally. ~ (Collins English Dictionary).

vituperative (adj.): of, relating to, or characterised by railing (against) offensively; reviling with venomous censure; (synonyms): abusive, vitriolic, virulent, insulting, harsh, withering, malign, belittling, sardonic, derogatory, scurrilous, defamatory, censorious, opprobrious, denunciatory, calumniatory; [e.g.]: “He is one of the author’s most vituperative critics”. ~ (Collins English Thesaurus).