Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A ballroom dance similar to the foxtrot, based on a dance of Martinique and St. Lucia.
- noun The music for this dance.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun See
Beguin .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A woman belonging to one of the religious and charitable associations or communities in the Netherlands, and elsewhere, whose members live in beguinages and are not bound by perpetual vows.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
ballroom dance , similar to a slowrumba , that originated in the FrenchWest Indies . - noun The
music for this dance.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun (Roman Catholic Church) a member of a lay sisterhood (one of several founded in the Netherlands in the 12th and 13th centuries); though not taking religious vows the sisters followed an austere life
- noun a ballroom dance that originated in the French West Indies; similar to the rumba
- noun music written in the bolero rhythm of the beguine dance
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Okay, I just went and looked it up, and apparently a "beguine" is "a dance in bolero rhythm that originated in Martinique," and I'm sorry, James Robinson, but I'm going to have to call bullshit on that one until I see a flashback sequence where Lois and Clark get Jimmy a Word-A-Day calendar for Christmas.
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Folks, I'll be honest with you here: I have no idea what a "beguine" is, and while this might just be me copping an ego, I'm pretty sure that
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Andrea Schacht: The novels about the beguine Almut Bossart.
Archive 2008-04-01 Nalini Singh 2008
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Andrea Schacht: The novels about the beguine Almut Bossart.
Reader Interview: Eva Nalini Singh 2008
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Let us “begin the beguine” at the beginning, with Tom Dyja, brilliant novelist who encouraged me to have fun rather than write something wrenching.
One Flight Up Susan Fales-Hill 2010
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Let us “begin the beguine” at the beginning, with Tom Dyja, brilliant novelist who encouraged me to have fun rather than write something wrenching.
One Flight Up Susan Fales-Hill 2010
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Some vitae indicate the language of the materials that the women read, as when the foundress of Engelthal, a beguine in Nuremberg named Alheid, read in German to her young community over meals. 17 Other vitae indicate the language that the women (and those associated with them) sang or spoke.
Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany 2008
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From these women arose a new type of religious woman, the beguine. 7 These women took temporary vows of chastity, while embracing apostolic poverty and a life of prayer combined with service.
Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany 2008
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Assuming we were loved at one time to beguine with of course.
Axelrod: Obama "thought very long and hard about" about opening up the CIA interrogation memos. Ann Althouse 2009
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Because I'm a music guy, I decided to begin the beguine by working on my own personal play list for my personal Obama victory party.
David Wild: An Embarrassingly Premature Obama Victory Party Mix 2008
fbharjo commented on the word beguine
both a dance
Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine" (1935) refers to a kind of popular dance of West Indian origin, from French colloquial béguin "an infatuation, boyfriend, girlfriend," earlier "child's bonnet," and before that "nun's headdress" (14c.), from Middle Dutch beggaert, ultimately the same word. - Online Etymology Dict.
and an order of women religious
late 15c., from French béguine (13c.), Medieval Latin beguina, a member of a women's spiritual order said to have been founded c.1180 in Liege in the Low Countries. They are said to take their name from the surname of Lambert le Bègue "Lambert the Stammerer," a Liege priest who was instrumental in their founding, and it's likely the word was pejorative at first.
The order generally preserved its reputation, though it quickly drew imposters who did not; nonetheless it eventually was condemned as heretical. A male order, called Beghards founded communities by the 1220s in imitation of them, but they soon degenerated (cf. Old French beguin "(male) Beguin," also "hypocrite") and wandered begging in the guise of religion; they likely were the source of the words beg and beggar, though there is disagreement over whether Beghard produced Middle Dutch beggaert "mendicant" or was produced by it. OnLine Etymology Dict.
February 6, 2013