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In the Romance languages of the Iberian peninsula, the French word nuance in the meaning ‘a gradation, a barely perceptible degree of difference in a color’ is translated today by the word matiz (Catalan matis ) , a term which has enjoyed continuous usage since the early fifteenth century. Until now, the origin of the word matiz has remained unsolved: none of the several etymologies which have been suggested for it are convincing, and no comprehensive attempt has ever been made to analyze its meaning or to trace its semantic evolution. It is the purpose of the present work to determine the etymology of this word and to describe its history.
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Eleanor Webster Bulatkin (1954) studied this question.
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