A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1467 entries
serein
Serein is fine rain falling from a clear sky, most often after sunset, with no cloud overhead to account for it. It is real and it is not common. The usual explanation is that the drops fall from a cloud that has already evaporated, or from one too thin and too high to be seen against a darkening sky, or that they have drifted a long way sideways from a shower somewhere else.
Etymology
The word is French for a fine evening rain, and its origin is contested. The obvious connection is to the French for evening, and the alternative is to the word meaning serene or clear, from the Latin for cloudless. Both readings describe the phenomenon, which is a rare case of two competing etymologies each fitting perfectly.
Notes
English took the word in the seventeenth century and never made much use of it, and it has stayed a word for word collections rather than for forecasts. What it names is closely related to sunshower, on this site, which is the daytime version and which has generated folklore in nearly every language, and to the fallstreaks trailing from high cloud in mare’s tail.