malvoisie

• malvesie, malvesey

From Middle English malvesye, malvesyn, from Anglo-Norman malvesey, malvoisin and Middle French malvoisie (which the modern form is influenced by), from Italian malvasia, from Ancient Greek Μονεμβασία (Monembasía, “Monemvasia”, a city on the Peloponnese), from μόνος (mónos, “only one”) + ἔμβασις (émbasis, “entering into”, ἐν + βάσις). Doublet of malvasia and Monemvasia. Compare malmsey.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈmalvɔɪzɪ/, /ˌmalvɔɪˈziː/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˌmɑlˌvwɑˈzi/
• Rhymes: -iː

malvoisie (countable and uncountable, plural malvoisies)

1. Synonym of malmsey (“wine”).
   • 1852, The Royalist and the Republican, volume 1, page 108:

     Now this Malvoisie has a body, and slips down the red lane with an unctuous savour; […]

   • 1991, Stephen Fry, chapter XIV, in Liar:

     Adrian stood and refilled Shelagh's glass. ‘A little more malvoisie for you?’

   • 2011, Thomas Penn, Winter King, Penguin, published 2012, page 217:

     There, gifts were exchanged […] and Philip's mistrels performed in front of the king's mother who sat, appreciative, her customary glass of malvesey to hand.

Borrowed from Italian malvasia.

• IPA^(key): /mal.vwa.zi/

• Audio (France (Lyon)):

  (file)

malvoisie m or (archaic) f (plural malvoisies)

1. malvasia (variety of grape)
2. malvoisie, malmsey (sweet fortified wine from that grape)
   • 1857, Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary […]‎^[1], Paris: Michel Lévy Frères; republished as Eleanor Marx, transl., Madame Bovary, 1886:

     C'était une sorte d'attachement idiot plein d'admiration pour lui, de voluptés pour elle, une béatitude qui l'engourdissait; et son âme s'enfonçait en cette ivresse et s'y noyait, ratatinée, comme le duc de Clarence dans son tonneau de malvoisie.

     Hers was an idiotic sort of attachment, full of admiration for him, of voluptuousness for her, a beatitude that benumbed her; her soul sank into this drunkenness, shrivelled up, drowned in it, like Clarence in his butt of Malmsey.

• “malvoisie”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012