Almain

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A lively court dance of German origin popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; a kind of hinged plate armour used to protect the body
2. A spirited German dance performed at European courts during the 1500s and 1600s ; a form of jointed metal plate used in medieval armour
3. A stately German couple dance fashionable in Renaissance Europe ; a plate of armour fastened with rivets to guard the body

Etymology: The word names two things that have little in common on the surface: a lively court dance and a kind of hinged body armour. What links them is a place. "Almain" comes from Middle English "Alemaine" and "Almayne", which go back to Old French "Alemaigne" and Late Latin "Alamannia", meaning the territory of the Alamanni, a Germanic people of the upper Rhine region. The name is thought to be built from words meaning "all" and "men", so the Alamanni were, in effect, "all men", though this is a probable reading rather than a certainty. Because the dance and the armour were both associated with Germany, English simply used the country's name in its older form to label them. A German origin was the point of the label, not a sign of the dance's subject matter. The dance was prized at European courts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the armour bore the same name because it came from the same German tradition.

Synonyms: allemande