Here is part of encyclopedia article. Notice German scholars apparently first used the term.
And I seem to remember it being spelled "Barock".
"The origins of the word baroque are not clear. It may have been derived from the Portuguese barocco or the Spanish barueco to indicate an irregularly shaped pearl. The word itself does not accurately define or even approximate the meaning of the style to which it refers. However, by the end of the 18th century baroque had entered the terminology of art criticism as an epithet leveled against 17th-century art, which many later critics regularly dismissed as too bizarre or strange to merit serious study. Writers such as the 19th-century Swiss cultural historian Jakob Burckhardt considered this style the decadent end of the Renaissance; his student Heinrich Wölfflin, in Principles of Art History (1915; translated 1932), first pointed out the fundamental differences between the art of the 16th and 17th centuries, stating that "baroque is neither a rise nor a decline from classic, but a totally different art."
"Baroque Art and Architecture," Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) 98 Encyclopedia. (c) 1993-1997 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
