Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A slow, stately dance, probably of Italian origin, but much practised in Spain.
  • noun Music for such a dance or in its rhythm, which is properly duple and very slow.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A stately and formal Spanish dance for which full state costume is worn; -- so called from the resemblance of its movements to those of the peacock.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a stately court dance of the 16th and 17th centuries
  • noun music composed for dancing the pavane

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Duniya ki jitani bahanen hain un sabaki shraddha hai isamein hai dharam karam bhaiya ka ye bahana ki raksha isamein hai jaise subhadra aur kishan ka jaise badari aur pavan ka jaise dharati aur gagan ka ye raakhi bandhan ...

    Archive 2009-08-01 photographerno1 2009

  • Paul Luetkeman published a pavan on Ohn dich muss in 1597, and Francesco Rovigo based a Magnificat on Venus, du und dein Kind 1583.

    Archive 2009-06-01 Lu 2009

  • They go—like six months, I think it’s sort of like some odd pavan, you know, where someone curtsies and someone bows, and then they walk around, you know, touching fingers and staring at each other hatefully the whole time.

    HOLLYWOOD INSIDER: Interview with Larry Miller & Meaghan Jette Martin 2009

  • People will burn out on being AS socialially networked as they are now. reply pavan

    Sean Parker: Twitter/Facebook Will Soon Dominate The Web — Not Google. MG Siegler 2005

  • And he tasted in the language of memory ambered wines, dying fallings of sweet airs, the proud pavan, and saw with the eyes of memory kind gentlewomen in Covent Garden wooing from their balconies with sucking mouths and the pox-fouled wenches of the taverns and young wives that, gaily yielding to their ravishers, clipped and clipped again.

    A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 2003

  • And he tasted in the language of memory ambered wines, dying fallings of sweet airs, the proud pavan, and saw with the eyes of memory kind gentlewomen in Covent Garden wooing from their balconies with sucking mouths and the pox-fouled wenches of the taverns and young wives that, gaily yielding to their ravishers, clipped and clipped again.

    A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Joyce, James, 1882-1941 1922

  • And he tasted in the language of memory ambered wines, dying fallings of sweet airs, the proud pavan, and saw with the eyes of memory kind gentlewomen in Covent Garden wooing from their balconies with sucking mouths and the pox-fouled wenches of the taverns and young wives that, gaily yielding to their ravishers, clipped and clipped again.

    A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Joyce, James, 1882-1941 1922

  • And he tasted in the language of memory ambered wines, dying fallings of sweet airs, the proud pavan, and saw with the eyes of memory kind gentlewomen in

    A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1911

  • The Passamezzo (or passy-measures pavin) tune in the Appendix has a similar construction to the ordinary pavan, the form of which has been explained earlier in this section -- _i. e._, it consists of regular

    Shakespeare and Music With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries 1900

  • He says that the instrumentalists increase the speed of the _pavan_ every time they play it through, and by the time it has reached the moderate speed of a _basse-dance_, it is no longer called Pavan, but Passemeze.

    Shakespeare and Music With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries 1900

Comments

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  • sorry oroboros!

    "...some criminal hand had merged at least three complements into one unmeaning heap, and that this same hand had spread out several manuscript sheets of music, the score of a pavan in C minor."

    --Patrick O'Brian, The Hundred Days, 39

    March 20, 2008