fandangos

Noun

fandango (countable and uncountable, plural fandangos or fandangoes)

1. A form of lively flamenco music and dance that has many regional variations (e.g. fandango de Huelva), some of which have their own names (e.g. malagueña, granadina).
   • The soldiers were oftener gambling and dancing beneath the walls than keeping watch upon the battlements, and nothing was heard from morning till night but the noisy contests of cards and dice, mingled with the sound of the bolero or fandango, the drowsy strumming of the guitar, and the rattling of...1829, Washington Irving, chapter XXVI, in Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada
2. A gathering for dancing; a ball.
   • When Auguste Fretéllière and the painter Theodore Gentilz attended a fandango in the 1840s, the festivities took place near Military Plaza.2008, Gene Fowler, Mavericks: A Gallery of Texas Characters, page 38
3. (colloquial, figuratively) An unknown entity or contraption.
   • What’s that fandango you’re using?
4. A confusion; a chaotic collection.
   • To my infinite amusement it did take, and I had the satisfaction of seeing it on the boards and also hearing the audience roar with laughter; in fact, I laughed myself, not at my own jokes, but at the people who could be amused at such a fandango of nonsense.1901, Marcian, Relics of the Late William Shakespeare, page 21
5. An extravaganza; an instance of lavish and fantastical events or behavior.
   • I am preparing to set out in a fortnight, or little more, and jogging on comfortably through Bavaria, Suabia, and France (with a fandango of eight days at Paris), I shall get to Calais in the first week of May.1849, Robert Murray Keith, Memoirs and Correspondence (official and Familiar), page 45
6. A shade of red-violet.

See all 9 meanings of fandango