dances

Noun

dance (countable and uncountable, plural dances)

1. A sequence of rhythmic steps or movements usually performed to music, for pleasure or as a form of social interaction.
   • I do a dance when she plays the drums!
2. A social gathering where dancing is the main activity.
   • The dance we had in August 2008 is one of the greatest moments of my life!
3. (uncountable) The art, profession, and study of dancing.
4. A piece of music with a particular dance rhythm.
   • They stayed together during three dances, went out on to the terrace, explored wherever they were permitted to explore, paid two visits to the buffet, and enjoyed themselves much in the same way as if they had been school-children surreptitiously breaking loose from an assembly of grown-ups.1909 September 9, Archibald Marshall [pseudonym; Arthur Hammond Marshall], “A Court Ball”, in The Squire’s Daughter, London: Methuen & Co. […], →OCLC, page 9
5. (figuratively) A battle of wits, especially one commonly fought between two rivals.
   • So how much longer are we gonna do this dance?
6. (dated, figuratively) Any strenuous or difficult movement, action, or task.
   • He that would watch the king's hares must not drag himself along as if he was a lazybones with soles of lead to his boots, or like a fly on a tar-brush, for when the hares began to scamper about on the hill-sides it was quite another dance than lying at home and catching fleas with mittens on.1886, Peter Christen Asbjø￵rnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 170

See all 16 meanings of dance