galliard

galliard noun: a lively dance, popular in 16th- and 17th-century Europe.

Noun

galliard (countable and uncountable, plural galliards)

A lively dance, popular in 16th- and 17th-century Europe.
- […] sweet to us it is to behold delightful dancing, be it the stately splendour of the Pavane which progresseth as large clouds at sun-down that pass by in splendour; or the graceful Allemande; or the Fandango, which goeth by degrees from languorous beauty to the swiftness and passion of Bacchanals...1922, E[ric] R[ücker] Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros: A Romance, London: Jonathan Cape […], →OCLC, page 33
The triple-time music for this dance.
(dated) A brisk, merry person.
- Thus every Gibelline hath got his Guelf ;
  But Selden he's a Galliard by himself ;
  And well may be ; there's more Divines in him ,
  Than in all this their Jewish Sanhedrim ;1647, John Cleveland, “The Mixt Assembly”, in The character of a London-diurnall with severall select poems, page 36 1647, keyboarded 1687, scanned
- I will be answerable that this galliard meant but some St. Valentine's jest.1828, Sir Walter Scott, The Fair Maid of Perth
(dated, uncountable, Continental printing) An intermediate size of type alternatively equated with brevier (by Didot points) or bourgeois (by Fournier points and by size).

galliard (comparative more galliard, superlative most galliard)

What does galliard mean?: Galliard means a lively dance, popular in 16th- and 17th-century Europe.
What part of speech is galliard?: Galliard can be a noun or an adjective.
What is the plural of galliard?: The plural of galliard is galliards.

Adapted from Wiktionary: galliard (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

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