There is fairly concerted agreement among Romance scholars that the word nuance had as its antecedent a verb nuer constructed on the noun nue ‘cloud,‘ which is derived from the Latin word nubes through the Vulgar Latin form *nuba. Diez (ii-c, 648), Hatzfeld and Darmesteter (s.v. Nue, Nuer), Meyer-Lübke (REW 5974), and Bloch and von Wartburg (s.v. Nue) concur in this etymology, which has been most recently summarized by Dauzat. The path of derivation which Dauzat describes is essentially as follows : 1) an archaic verb nuer, conveying the meaning of the modern verb nuancer, and now used only as a technical term, was derived, through the suggestion of the varied tints of clouds, from the noun nue (attested in the twelfth century [Littré, s.v. Nue]); 2) the verb nuer is attested in the year 1352 in the expression or nué, according to Bloch and von Wartburg, and appears in the works of d'Aubigné in the sixteenth century; 3) from the verb nuer is derived the noun nuance, which is attested in 1611 in Cotgrave; 4) the verbal form nuancer appears in the works of d'Aubigné as nuancé in the sixteenth century, and is attested in the 1701 edition of the dictionary of Furetière; and 5) the verb nuancer superseded the archaic verb nuer.