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dancing on nothing

dancing on nothing is the present participle of dance on nothing.

Meaning of dance on nothing

Verb

dance on nothing (third-person singular simple present dances on nothing, present participle dancing on nothing, simple past and past participle danced on nothing)

(archaic, idiomatic) To be hanged.
- Oh! Do hang him-we have waited
  Many a day for such a chance;
  Let the hempen cord be baited;
  See how gracefully he'll dance
  Dance on nothing! oh, how funny![…]1849, A. H. Baker, “Hang the Black Rascal”, in The Prisoners' Friend
Synonyms:

dance on a rope, dance upon nothing, dance the hempen jig, dance the Tyburn jig, dangle, hang, ride a horse foaled by an acorn, stretch hemp, string up, swing

Questions about dancing on nothing

What is dancing on nothing the present participle of?: Dancing on nothing is the present participle of dance on nothing.

Words near dancing on nothing in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: dancing on nothing (page history and authors); dance on nothing (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “dancing on nothing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dancing_on_nothing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.