danse macabre

American  

[dahns ma-ka-br^uh] / dɑ̃s maˈka brə /

noun

1. dance of death.

---

danse macabre British  

/ dɑ̃s makɑbrə /

noun

1. another name for dance of death

---

Etymology

Origin of danse macabre

From French

Example Sentences

In contrast to the danse macabre sequences at the deathbed, Jill overhears the “celebratory sound” of a neighbor’s back yard evening wedding by torchlight.

From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 26, 2026

The Philharmonic played well, with an almost choked grotesquerie in the march in the first movement, an eerie danse macabre of the second and bristling unsentimentality in the third.

From New York Times • Jun. 3, 2022

Conceived with lavish theatricality but on a human scale, the work, called “The Procession” and on view through Jan. 22, 2023, feels part religious pageant, part carnival, part danse macabre.

From New York Times • Apr. 1, 2022

His body of work is a long danse macabre between fiction and reality.

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 9, 2021

And then he lay there as the danse macabre of the demons of fear that lived in his body began in earnest.

From "The Great Santini" by Pat Conroy