If you've been more than a little confused by some of the vocabulary used in both the lyrics and spoken dialogue of THE SOUND OF MUSIC, (with the assistance of Merriam-Webster) here are a few definitions that may help:

• Anschluss (proper noun):
  1. the German annexation of Austria on March 11, 1938
• dervish (noun):
  1. a member of a Muslim religious order noted for devotional exercises (as bodily movements leading to a trance)
  2. one that whirls or dances with or as if with the abandonment of a dervish
• edelweiss (noun):
  1. a small alpine perennial composite herb (Leontopodium alpinum) of central and southeast Europe that has a dense woolly white pubescence: a flowering herb
• flibbertigibbet (noun):
  1. a silly flighty person
• gauleiter (noun):
  1. a district political official in Nazi Germany
• goatherd (noun):
  1. a person who tends goats
• incorrigible (adjective):
  1. incapable of being corrected or amended:
     1. not reformable: depraved; delinquent
     2. not manageable: unruly
     3. unalterable, inveterate
• ken (noun):
  1. the range of vision: sight, view
  2. the range of perception, understanding, or knowledge
• roué (noun):
  1. a man devoted to a life of sensual pleasure: rake
• Untersberg (proper noun):
  1. a mountain peak rising 1853 meters out of the Salzburg basin
• vespers (singular and plural noun):
  1. the sixth of the Catholic canonical hours that is said or sung in the late afternoon
  2. a service of evening worship
• will-o'-the-wisp (noun):
  1. Ignis Fatuus (a light that sometimes appears in the night over marshy ground and is often attributable to the combustion of gas from decomposed organic matter)
  2. a delusive or elusive goal
• wireless (noun):
  1. wireless telegraphy
  2. two-way wireless transmission of sound using radio waves
  3. chiefly British: radio

© 2005 Merriam-Webster

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