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Definition 2024


balaine

balaine

Old French

Noun

balaine f (oblique plural balaines, nominative singular balaine, nominative plural balaines)

  1. Alternative form of baleine
    • late 12th century, anonymous, La Folie de Tristan de Berne, page 310 (of the Champion Classiques edition of Le Roman de Tristan, ISBN 2-7453-0520-4), lines 157-8:
      Qui t'engendra? — Uns galerous
      — De que t'ot il? — D'une balaine
      — Who is your father? — A walrus
      — Who did he have you with? — A whale (Tristan is deliberately speaking nonsense in this passage in order to pass for a harmless madman)