Word.ws English Dictionary

battement

battement noun: a ballet move involving a beating action with an extended leg.

Noun

battement (plural battements)

  1. (ballet) A ballet move involving a beating action with an extended leg
    • […] he raised slowly his rounded arms, stretched them gracefully backward and forward, moved his feet with precision and lightness, took a few small steps, made some battements and pirouettes, and disappeared like a butterfly.1894, Arthur Machen, Memoirs of Casanova
    • Ernst and Watson are superb dancers--extraordinarily agile and acrobatic, and their unison spins, battements, and body lines showed a split-second timing.1988 March 11, Dorothy Samachson, “Chicago Repertory Dance Ensemble”, in Chicago Reader
  2. (obsolete) A thumping or beating sensation
    • Secondly, though there is an audible vertigo, as is known by the battement, or undulations of sound in the ears, which many vertiginous people experience[…].1796, Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia, Vol. I

Forms of battement

pluralbattements

Origin of battement

Borrowed from French battement (“beating, hitting”).

Questions about battement

What does battement mean?
Battement means a ballet move involving a beating action with an extended leg.
What part of speech is battement?
Battement is a noun.
What is the plural of battement?
The plural of battement is battements.

Words near battement in the dictionary

  1. battelles
  2. battelling
  3. battells
  4. battelly
  5. battels
  6. battement
  7. battements
  8. batten
  9. Batten disease
  10. batten down
  11. batten down the hatches

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: battement (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “battement.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/battement. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.