Word.ws English Dictionary

passecaille

passecaille 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 passecaille

pluralpassecailles

Questions about passecaille

What is passecaille the alternative form of?
Passecaille is the alternative form of passacaglia.

Words near passecaille in the dictionary

  1. passe-dix
  2. passe-garde
  3. passe-gardes
  4. passe-partout
  5. passe-partouts
  6. passecaille
  7. passecailles
  8. passed
  9. passed a good time
  10. passed a sponge over the slate
  11. passed a stool

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: passecaille (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: “passecaille.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/passecaille. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.