Word.ws English Dictionary

passacaille

passacaille is the alternative form of passacaglia.

Meaning of passacaglia

Noun

passacaglia (countable and uncountable, plural passacaglias)

  1. A form of historical Spanish or Italian dance characterised by a serious nature, triple meter, and use of a ground bass.
    • In classical music there are, as the analytical programs tell us, first subjects and second subjects, free fantasias, recapitulations, and codas; there are fugues, with counter-subjects, strettos, and pedal points; there are passacaglias on ground basses, canons ad hypodiapente, and other...1902 [1898], [George] Bernard Shaw, The Perfect Wagnerite […] , second edition, London: Grant Richards, page 3
  2. (broadly) Any piece of classical music with similar characteristics.

Forms of passacaille

pluralpassacailles

Questions about passacaille

What is passacaille the alternative form of?
Passacaille is the alternative form of passacaglia.

Words near passacaille in the dictionary

  1. passable
  2. passableness
  3. passably
  4. passacaglia
  5. passacaglias
  6. passacaille
  7. passacailles
  8. passade
  9. passades
  10. passado
  11. passadoes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: passacaille (page history and authors); passacaglia (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.

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Cite this entry: “passacaille.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/passacaille. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.