"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 19/02/18 (prom)

I'm going to talk about Proms today. Not just the Proms in the Royal Albert Hall, but also prom culture seems to have come to British schools. They're very much... At the end of exams now, schools will hold formal dances for pupils. If it's a single-sex school they invite another school along, and it's a big deal and definetely an import from North America, you would think, and it is in some way, but actually prom, if you go back over its history, has crossed the Atlantic and also other seas quite a few times. It's a shortener from "promenade", which is the word of French origin and that was used as early at the 1500s to mean a leisure walk. In later years it was a public space in which such leisure walks took place. About three centures later, so it took a little while, promenade has begun to be used as the shorteningof its own, stanting in for things like a promenade deck on board a ship, where people who were taking a cruise, for example, could go up and take a leasure stroll and take in some sea air. And indeed there was a promenade concert, which was a concert place without seating, and that is where the Prom in the Royal Albert Hall come in, probably the most famous of all promenade concerts. But promenade also had quite strong link with dance, and in ballet it's a slow turn made on one leg. It's got a different meaning in country dance. It's like a formation really of couples moving forward. And in ballroom dancing it's called an open position for promenading, which the partner face in the same direction again, as if they're about to take a walk. But the proms we know today that are creeping into schools, that all goes back to Ivy League universities in the USA, but it's gone all the way around the world and, as I say, it's settled in the Royal Albert Hall, and long may it continue.