She shot down the slope again and he watched her glide, quickly and precisely cutting through the snow.
There's a word for that.
What is it?
Glissade. It's French in origin.
I've heard something similar.
Glissando, probably. It's a music term.
Yeah! When you slide between two notes, right?
That's the one.
***
He went down the scale again and she watched him glide, suddenly yet skillfully maneuvering through the keys.
They come from the same place, actually—glissade and glissando.
And what's that?
Glissade comes from the French 'glisser'. And glissando from 'glissant', which is the present participle of glisser.
Huh.
It's beautiful, don't you think? It's a metaphor that comes purely from word origins.
I guess.
Some people just went and decided that both actions made for an elegant glide, and probably weren't even thinking of the other word, whichever came first.
It is pretty, I suppose. That natural comparison.
***
Their hobbies involved glissade and glissando, though with not much overlap. They knew of the etymology, the similarities in motion, the beauty behind their collective dance, but not their critical difference.
He didn't notice until she was far down another slope, and it was then he finally realized that glissade and glissando—once those two untouchable French beauties—perhaps weren't so similar after all. Glissando was stuck in the present, so assured of his own brilliance and the pretty, yet ultimately stagnant patterns he could produce. Glissade could see ahead, and didn't like what she could see.
So she glided away.