{"id":6870,"date":"2025-05-11T14:08:55","date_gmt":"2025-05-11T14:08:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=6870"},"modified":"2025-05-11T14:11:41","modified_gmt":"2025-05-11T14:11:41","slug":"word-of-the-day-waltz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2025\/05\/11\/word-of-the-day-waltz\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Waltz"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today\u2019s word of the day, thanks to the On This Day website, is waltz<\/em>. The word is used as a noun meaning \u201ca ballroom dance, in moderately fast triple meter, in which the dancers revolve in perpetual circles, taking one step to each beat\u201d (https:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/browse\/waltz<\/a>) as well as a piece of music written for such a dance. In the USA, it can also mean \u201can easy victory or accomplishment.\u201d The word can also be used as an adjective, as in \u201ca waltz tune,\u201d or it can be used as a verb, either a transitive verb or an intransitive one. And as a verb, it can be used with the formal definition (e.g., \u201cHe asked her to waltz\u201d) or with the informal definition (e.g., \u201cShe waltzed through the interview\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Etymonline.com says that waltz<\/em> refers to a \u201cround dance performed by couples to music in triple time, extraordinarily popular as a fashionable dance from late 18c. to late 19c. (the dance itself probably of Bohemian origin), 1779, walse<\/em>, in a translation of \u2018Die Leiden des jungen Werthers<\/em>\u2019 from a French translation, which has walse;<\/em> from German Waltzer<\/em>, from walzen<\/em> \u2018to roll, dance,\u2019 from Old High German walzan<\/em> \u2018to turn, roll.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is from Proto-Germanic *walt-<\/em> (cognate with Old Norse velta<\/em>), from PIE root *wel-<\/a> (3) \u2018to turn, revolve.\u2019 Related verbs include Middle English walt<\/em> (v.) “to turn over, be overturned; surge, well up” (c. 1200)\u201d (https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/search?q=waltz<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Society of Folk Dance Historians has a webpage devoted to the history of the waltz. According to the SFDH, the waltz is \u201cthe oldest of the ballroom dances, dating from the middle of the 8th century. The German L\u00e4ndler<\/em>, a folk dance, is supposed to be the forerunner of the waltz. During this time period, a dance developed that was called the Walzer<\/em>, a word owing its origin to the Latin word volvere<\/em>, which indicates a rotating motion\u201d (https:\/\/sfdh.us\/encyclopedia\/history_of_the_waltz.html<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dance has not always been popular with everyone: \u201cThe French philosopher Michel de Montaigne wrote of a dance he saw in 1580 in Augsburg, where the dancers held each other so closely that their faces touched. Kunz Haas (of approximately the same period) wrote, \u2018Now they are dancing the godless Weller<\/em> or Spinner<\/em>\u2019\u201d ( https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Waltz<\/a>). The wiki goes on, \u201cAround 1750, the lower classes in the regions of Bavaria, Tyrol, and Styria began dancing a couples dance called Walzer<\/em>. The L\u00e4ndler<\/em>, \u2026 a country dance in 3\/4 time, was popular in Bohemia, Austria, and Bavaria, and spread from the countryside to the suburbs of the city. While the eighteenth-century upper classes continued to dance the minuets (such as those by Mozart, Haydn and Handel), bored noblemen slipped away to the balls of their servants.\u201d It seems as if the usual direction of cultural movement is from the upper classes to the lower classes, but it may often be the opposite, and when it is, one frequently finds criticism from those in the upper classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, \u201cIn the 1771 German novel Geschichte des Fr\u00e4uleins von Sternheim<\/em> [The Story of Miss von Sternhaim<\/em>] by Sophie von La Roche [the first financially successful female writer in Deutschland who wrote novels intended to be instructive to Deutschland\u2019s young women], a high-minded character complains about the newly introduced waltz among aristocrats thus: “But when he put his arm around her, pressed her to his breast, cavorted with her in the shameless, indecent whirling-dance of the Germans and engaged in a familiarity that broke all the bounds of good breeding\u2014then my silent misery turned into burning rage” ( https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Waltz<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And later, \u201cThe music struck up a beautiful air, and the dancers advanced a few steps, when suddenly, to my no small horror and amazement, the gentlemen seized the ladies round the waist, and all, as if dancing round a statue of the jolly god. \u2018A waltz<\/em>!\u2019 exclaimed I, inexpressibly shocked, \u2018have I lived to see Scotch women waltz<\/em>?\u2019 [The Edinburgh Magazine<\/em>, April 1820]\u201d (https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/search?q=waltz<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the reason I chose waltz for today\u2019s word of the day is that, according to the On This Date website, \u201cThe Waltz is introduced into English ballrooms; some observers consider it disgusting and immoral\u201d (https:\/\/www.onthisday.com\/events\/may\/11<\/a>). One can only imagine what the critics of the waltz would think of the kind of dancing, and the kind of music, that is popular among young people today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, and regarding the ellipsis in the quotation above. What I left out was this: \u201cThe L\u00e4ndler<\/em>, also known as the Schleifer<\/em>\u2026\u201d (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Waltz<\/a>). I had no idea that there was a dance named after my family. But it turns out that Schleifer is also a musical term, signifying a slide, a musical ornamentation that \u201cinstructs the performer to begin two or three scale steps below the marked note and \u2018slide\u2019 upward\u201d (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Slide_(musical_ornament)<\/a>). Schleifer also refers to a dialect that is \u201ca transitional dialect of the Upper and Lower Sorbian languages spoken in the Schleife region\u201d (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Schleifer_dialect<\/a>). And Schleife \u201cis a municipality of 3,000 in northern G\u00f6rlitz district, northeast Saxony, Germany. It is the seat of the Verwaltungsgemeinschaft <\/em>[\u2018administrative community\u2019] Schleife<\/em> (about 5,000 inhabitants)\u201d (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Schleife<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then again, one of the translations of the Deutsch word Schleifer<\/em> is \u201cgrinder,\u201d and what does that say about a dance that was once called the Schleifer?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s image is from The Sound of Music<\/em> (movie) (https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/tim-laskey\/leandler-waltz-from-sound-of-music-138-waltz<\/a>). Growing up, I had always just assumed that the dance in this movie was a waltz, but apparently it was a L\u00e4ndler<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s word of the day, thanks to the On This Day website, is waltz. The word is used as a noun meaning \u201ca ballroom dance, in moderately fast triple meter, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6871,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[742,238,395,284,741],"class_list":["post-6870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","tag-culture","tag-dictionary","tag-etymology","tag-linguistics","tag-waltz","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6870"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6872,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6870\/revisions\/6872"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}