measure

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measure.
1. Old Eng. term, now adopted in USA and reintroduced into Britain in 19th cent. by John Curwen, indicating time-content of notational space between one bar-line and the next, e.g. ‘2 beats in the bar’.

2. The bar-line itself. Note that the Eng. ‘bar’ is the same as Amer. ‘measure’; Amer. ‘bar’ means Eng. ‘bar-line’.

3. A stately Eng. dance of 15th and 16th cents. (‘trod a measure’ is a frequent phrase in Elizabethan drama).

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