Pavane
noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A musical style characteristic of the 16th and 17th centuries.
"[…] if the men should not agree what to play, but one would have a grave Pavane, another a nimbler Galliard, a third some frisking toy or Iigg, and then all of them should be wilful, none yield to his fellow, but every one scrape on his own tune as loud as he could: what a hideous hateful noise may you imagine would such a mess of Musick be?"
- 2 a stately court dance of the 16th and 17th centuries wordnet
- 3 A moderately slow, courtly processional dance in duple time/meter.
"Why then be merry; be merry, or I’le be Out of humour, and then who shall dance the Pavan With Ossorio?"
- 4 music composed for dancing the pavane wordnet
- 1 To dance the pavane. intransitive, rare
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"The Lord Gro covered his face with his mantle and wept to hear and behold the divine Pavane; for as ghosts rearisen it raised up for him old happy half-forgotten days in Goblinland, before he had conspired against King Gaslark and been driven forth from his dear native land, an exile in waterish Witchland."
Etymology
From French pavane, from dialectal Italian pavana, contraction of the older padovana, feminine of padovano, meaning from the city of Padua (Italian Padova, dialectal form Pava).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.