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beguine (buh-GEEN) - n., a ballroom dance from Martinique similar to the rumba; the music for same.
Properly, it should be spelled béguine, but it's been anglicized. The dance, made briefly internationally popular by Cole Porter's 1935 song "Begin the Beguine," means an infatuation/boyfriend/girlfriend, from French béguin, a flirtation or a nun's head-dress, both senses derived from a medieval order of nuns which had slightly laxer rules than some (in that members were allowed to leave the order to marry, instead of staying for life), named after their founder, a Leige priest known as Lambert le Bègue, meaning Lambert the Stammerer. Their male counterparts were a mendicant order, Beghards, from which we get beg and beggar.
---L.
Properly, it should be spelled béguine, but it's been anglicized. The dance, made briefly internationally popular by Cole Porter's 1935 song "Begin the Beguine," means an infatuation/boyfriend/girlfriend, from French béguin, a flirtation or a nun's head-dress, both senses derived from a medieval order of nuns which had slightly laxer rules than some (in that members were allowed to leave the order to marry, instead of staying for life), named after their founder, a Leige priest known as Lambert le Bègue, meaning Lambert the Stammerer. Their male counterparts were a mendicant order, Beghards, from which we get beg and beggar.
---L.
