minuet means A slow graceful dance consisting of a coupé, a high step, and a balance.
Why “minuet” is a great word
A slow, stately dance in triple meter, popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, or the music composed for such a dance. From French menuet, from menu ("small, fine") + -et ("diminutive suffix"), from Latin minutus ("very small, minute"), referring to the small, delicate steps of the dance; first attested in English in the 1670s. Unlike the rustic, skipping energy of the gavotte or the swirling, intimate revolution of the waltz, the minuet is a ceremony of measured grace: it is the soft rustle of taffeta tracing intricate floor-patterns, the precise click of heels on a parquet floor, and the suspended, crystalline moment of a bow and a curtsey—a formalized and vanishing language of courtship, where every small step carries the weight of unspoken words.
Etymology
From French menuet, from menu (“small”) + -et (“diminutive”), from Latin minutus (“very small”).
noun
- A slow graceful dance consisting of a coupé, a high step, and a balance.
- A tune or air to regulate the movements of the minuet dance: it has the dance form, and is commonly in 3/4, sometimes 3/8, measure.
- A complete short musical composition inspired by and conforming to many formal characteristics of the traditional musical accompaniment to the dance of same name.
- A movement which is part of a longer musical composition such as a suite, sonata, or symphony which is inspired by and conforming to formal characteristics of the dance of same name.
verb
- To dance a minuet.“After he had raved his time upon the stage, the ladies and knights again minueted for an hour, and again gave place.”
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