Word.ws English Dictionary

prance

UK/ˈpɹɑːns/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/ˈpɹɐːns/

prance verb: to spring forward on the hind legs.

prance: to spring forward on the hind legs
Image: Havang(nl), CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Verb

prance (third-person singular simple present prances, present participle prancing, simple past and past participle pranced)

  1. To spring forward on the hind legs.
  2. (colloquial, figuratively) To strut about in a showy manner.
    • John's daughter was prancing about the sitting room, practicing for her school dance.
    • “So, so beautiful. I'm gonna do one last roly-poly before we go. [snorting, squealing] At least I had one moment of joy in a life of drudgery. Where will the truffle hunt take us next?” “Nowhere. You're free, Jambone. I'm releasing you from nose jail.” “Really? I can stay here in this paradise and...2025 September 15, David A. Goodman, “The Trouble with Truffles” (18:04 from the start), in Futurama, season 10, episode 9, spoken by Jambone (Maria Bamford)

Noun

prance (plural prances)

  1. A prancing movement.
    • There seemed a little prance of triumph in his movement,1915, D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow

prance meaning in Malayalam, Kannada and Arabic

prance in Malayalam

തള്ളുക, ചാടുക, കുതിരയോടിക്കുക

prance in Kannada

ನೆಗೆದು ನಡೆ, ಬೀಗಿ ನಡೆ

prance in Arabic

of a horse
اِسْتَنَاصَ istanāṣa, نَاصَ nāṣa

Examples of prance in a sentence

  • You know, it's that workout program where you pole dance and prance around like a stripper.
  • Ferrell is the ubiquitous hambone, an affably oblivious man-child prone to shirtless prancing onscreen.
  • Before they were assured by feminists that men hate them, women used to prance more.

All 17 example sentences with prance

Forms of prance

Verb
third-person singular presentprances
present participleprancing
past participlepranced
pastpranced
Noun
pluralprances

Past tense of prance: pranced

Origin of prance

From Middle English prancen, prauncen (“to prance”, literally “to show off”), variant of Middle English pranken (“to prank”), thus probably from the same ultimate root as prank. Cognate with Bavarian prangezen, prangssen (“to put on airs”), Alemannic German pranzen (“to strut”).

Words formed from prance

Words that rhyme with prance

4 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about prance

What does prance mean?
Prance means to spring forward on the hind legs.
What is prance in Malayalam?
Prance in Malayalam is തള്ളുക, ചാടുക, കുതിരയോടിക്കുക. See Prance meaning in Malayalam.
What part of speech is prance?
Prance can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce prance?
Prance is pronounced /ˈpɹɑːns/ (UK).
What is the past tense of prance?
The past tense of prance is pranced.

Words near prance in the dictionary

  1. Pranay
  2. pranayam
  3. pranayama
  4. pranayamas
  5. pranayams
  6. prance
  7. pranced
  8. pranceful
  9. prancer
  10. prancercise
  11. prancers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: prance (page history and authors); prance (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); prance (Kannada Wiktionary) (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-prance.ogg.

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