Search the Dictionary

A brawl or dance. [Obs.] Spenser.

A noisy, rapid, shuffling dance engaged in competitively by a number of persons or pairs in succession, as among the colored people of the Southern United States, and so called, perhaps, because the exercise is continued until most of those who take part in it break down.

A stake or post set in the ground, for guests at a wedding to dance round. Divide the broad bridecake Round about the bridestake. B. Jonson.

foon. "Buffoon stories." Macaulay. To divert the audience with buffoon postures and antic dances. Melmoth.

sleeping. Bartlett. Van Corlear stopped occasionally in the villages to eat pumpkin pies, dance at country frolics, and bundle with the Yankee lasses. W. Irving.

Buoys, taken collectively; a series of buoys, as for the guidance of vessels into or out of port; the providing of buoys.

An Andalusian dance in three-four time, resembing the bolero. [Sometimes in English spelled cachuca (.] The orchestra plays the cachucha. Logfellow.

A quick and lively dance. [Obs.] Make you dance canary With sprightly fire and motion. Shak.

To perform the canary dance; to move nimbly; to caper. [Obs.] But to jig of a tune at the tongue's end, canary to it with your feet. Shak. CANARY BIRD Ca*na"ry bird`. (Zoöl.)

A rollicking French dance, accompanied by indecorous or extravagant postures and gestures.

eap or jump about in a sprightly manner; to cut capers; to skip; to spring; to prance; to dance. He capers, he dances, he has eyes of youth. Shak.

One who capers, leaps, and skips about, or dances. The nimble capperer on the cord. Dryden.

A French mechanical lamp, for lighthouses, in which a superbundance of oil is pumped to the wick tube by clockwork.

A popular or Red Rebublican song and dance, of the time of the first French Revolution. They danced and yelled the carmagnole. Compton Reade.

A round dance. [Obs.] Chaucer.

r with the middle finger; -- used by the Spaniards and Moors as an accompaniment to their dance and guitars.

An old Spanish dance in moderate three-four measure, like the Passacaglia, which is slower. Both are used by classical composers as themes for variations.

Attendance of a chaperon on a lady in public; protection afforded by a chaperon.

irresistibly; to delight exceedingly; to enchant; to fascinate. They, on their mirth and dance Intent, with jocund music charm his ear. Milton.

A popular Moorish, Spanish, and South American dance, said to be the original of the fandango, etc.