beguine
UK/beɪˈɡiːn/US/bəˈɡiːn/
beguine noun: a ballroom dance, similar to a slow rumba, originally from French West Indies and popularized abroad largely through the song "Begin the Beguine"; the music for the dance.
Noun (1)
beguine (plural beguines)
- A ballroom dance, similar to a slow rumba, originally from French West Indies and popularized abroad largely through the song "Begin the Beguine"; the music for the dance.
- When they begin the beguine, / It brings back the sound of music so tender / It brings back the night of tropical splendor, / It brings back a memory ever green.1935, Cole Porter, Begin the Beguine
- It was a haunting kind of beguine with a strange sad lyric about slavery and freedom set against insistent drums and voluptuous maracas:1956, Langston Hughes, I Wonder as I Wander, 2003, Arnold Rampersad, Dolan Hubbard (editors), The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, Volume 14: Autobiography, page 69
Noun (2) capitalized: Beguine
Beguine (plural Beguines)
- A member of a semimonastic Christian lay religious order active in Northern Europe, particularly in the Low Countries in the 13th–16th centuries.
Forms of beguine
| plural | beguines |
|---|---|
| plural | Beguines |
Origin of beguine
From American French béguine, from French béguin.
From Old French béguine.
Words that rhyme with beguine
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- glean
- between
- byzantine
- canteen
- greene
- preen
- Racine
- careen
- intervene
- lean
- wean
- Christine
- obscene
- routine
- skene
- spleen
- submarine
- cuisine
- gasoline
- irene
- red bean
- serene
- -ene
- baleen
- demean
- eleventeen
- fascine
- gombeen
- latrine
- pristine
- Qazvin
- sheen
- tangerine
- unclean
- unseen
- vaccine
- amine
- aquamarine
- Beane
- beseen
- bottine
- chopine
- Enigma machine
- Eugene
- gene
- in between
- internecine
- jean
Questions about beguine
- What does beguine mean?
- Beguine means a ballroom dance, similar to a slow rumba, originally from French West Indies and popularized abroad largely through the song "Begin the Beguine"; the music for the dance.
- What part of speech is beguine?
- Beguine is a noun.
- How do you pronounce beguine?
- Beguine is pronounced /beɪˈɡiːn/ (UK).
- What is the plural of beguine?
- The plural of beguine is beguines.
Words near beguine in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: beguine (page history and authors); Beguine (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “beguine.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/beguine. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.