Dear David, May I add that words often get corrupted in some way, especially when imported from one language to another. For example, the tautological Sinkapace Galliard is derived from the French Cinq Pas, the five kicking steps of the Galliard.
The English even manage to mangle their own words. I have in mind Sellenger's Round, which is derived from St Leger's Round (nothing to do with horses). There are two ways words may be corrupted: 1) By speech - mishearing what is being said; 2) By writing - misreading what has been written. One interesting example of misreading words was once explained to me by Brian Trowell, when he was Professor of Music at King's College, London. (I don't think I've mentioned this before on Wayne's List. Apologies if I have.) I'll do it in stages. 1) If you write the name Dunstable in an abbreviated form, it would look like "Dunstab". 2) In the past it was common for people to abbreviate the letter "n" to a line over the preceding vowel giving "Dustab". 3) The letter "s" in the middle of a word would look like "f" without a horizontal line. However, if a "t" was close by, it would provide the missing horizontal line, giving "Dufab". 4) When describing the letter "v" (the "u" in "Hunt's Up") I said that the top right-hand line might well loop over to the left to join the left-hand bit of othe letter. Well, the same could happen here, with the "b" being misread as "y", especially if the bottom left part of the "b" drooped down like it does with a flat sign. [Flat signs were originally little letter "b"s.] Dunstable's name was sometimes spellt "Dunstaple", in which case the droopy part of the letter would be even more in evidence. 5) Hey presto! A piece of music composed by Dunstable is now ascribed to Dufay. Best wishes, Stewart. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Howard Posner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "David Rastall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Roman Turovsky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "Lute Net" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, April 14, 2004 9:35 PM Subject: Re: Honsok > David Rastall at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > Seriously, I was wondering whether "passymeasures" had its derivation > > in the word "passamezzo." > > It's the generally accepted derivation.
