A pavin is a stately dance (see Pavan); a passy-measure pavin is a reeling dance or motion, like that of a drunken man, from side to side. Sir Toby Belch says of Dick Surgeon—
“He’s a rogue and a passy-measure pavin. I hate a drunken rogue.”—Shakespeare: Twelfth Night, v. 1.
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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.
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