pavane
Americannoun
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pavanes
plural
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a stately dance dating from the 16th century.
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the music for this dance.
noun
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a slow and stately dance of the 16th and 17th centuries
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a piece of music composed for or in the rhythm of this dance, usually characterized by a slow stately triple time
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of pavane
1525–35; < Middle French < Italian pavana, contraction of padovana (feminine) of Padua ( Italian Padova )
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Still, there is that perfectly shaped pearl of a pavane that, throughout it all, stays in the memory.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 9, 2022
But leave it to Dowland to give himself the loveliest, noblest and most sympathetic pavane, suffused with a honeyed sweetness, the title “Semper Dowland, Semper Dolens.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 11, 2020
It shows how the perfect union, represented by the courtly pavane and other Renaissance dances, can be ruptured by rumor.
From Washington Post
There is the grave pavane of the beruffled nudibranchs, tiny fish that swirl among moving fronds like bright dancers in an oriental court.
From Time Magazine Archive
From the wings I heard and watched the pavane of tragedy move steadily toward its climax.
From "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou
Without the closest of listening, the seven pavanes can otherwise, most agreeably but also least convincingly, simply flow by as inspired background music.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 11, 2020
Some day, when the Wateaus of the future are painting the court ladies who again dance pavanes in sunlit glades, wearing wigs and crinoline, such data will amuse.
From Woman as Decoration by Emily Burbank
Manuel was well liked by the nobility, and when the barons and the fine ladies assembled in the evening for pavanes and branles and pazzamenos nobody danced more statelily than Messire Manuel.
From Figures of Earth by James Branch Cabell
This was the end of the long tragedy of civil strife and of wars of conquest, mingled with the sound of Results of the religious wars. madrigals and psalms and pavanes.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 10, Slice 7 "Fox, George" to "France" by Various
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
