contredanse
Americannoun
-
contredanses
plural
-
a variation of the quadrille in which the dancers face each other.
-
a piece of music suitable for such a dance.
noun
-
a courtly Continental version of the English country dance, similar to the quadrille
-
music written for or in the rhythm of this dance
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of contredanse
1795–1805; < French, equivalent to contre- counter- + danse dance, misrendering of English country-dance, by association with the characteristic arrangement of dancers in rows facing each other
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Many sections resemble contredanse or quadrille: ballroom arrangements of circles, lines, stars; dancers holding hands as they pass.
From New York Times ● Dec. 9, 2022
The habanera and its contredanse antecedents had a highly distinctive accompanying rhythm of four beats, which in musical notation - as in the opening of the Bizet song - looks like this.
From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall
Less than a month after mid-summer, the hour was not so much into morning, and there were some tireless votaries of Terpsichore inclined for still another contredanse, by way of wind up.
From No Quarter! by Reid, Mayne
The strains of the orchestra who had struck the measure of the first figure of a contredanse sounded like fairy-music, distant, unreal in their ears.
From Lord Tony's Wife An Adventure of the Scarlet Pimpernel by Orczy, Emmuska Orczy, Baroness
Flocks of old gulls, enormous as hens, fluttered with evolutions like a contredanse upon its glossy surface.
From The Dead Command From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan by Douglas, Frances
Previous to the introduction of quadrilles and country dances or contredanses, the inaptitude of nine-tenths of mankind for dancing was still more eminently demonstrated in the murders of the minuet.
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 341, March, 1844 by Various
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
