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fouetté

American  
[fwe-tay] / fwɛˈteɪ /

noun

Ballet.
  • fouettés
    plural
  1. a whipping movement of the free leg, often executed during a turn.


fouetté British  
/ fwete /

noun

  1. a step in ballet in which the dancer stands on one foot and makes a whiplike movement with the other

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms


Etymology

Origin of fouetté

1820–30; < French, past participle of fouetter to whip


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:

Whirling through her whipping fouetté turns as the predatory Odile in the third act, could she have kept spinning till spring?

From Washington Post ● Feb. 10, 2022

In Eliot’s book, Mr. Mistoffelees is a precious creation; in the musical, he is a gay icon, bedazzled like the night sky, sometimes pulling off twenty-four fouetté turns in a row.

From The New Yorker ● Dec. 16, 2019

Arabesque, fouetté turn, soulful liquid melt to the mat with her arms outstretched.

From Slate ● Jul. 23, 2018

But given his skill and my incompetence, this was like a ballerina demonstrating a fouetté for a toddler with a broken leg.

From The Guardian ● Sep. 17, 2017

Petipa left out fouetté turns, so they rectify that omission; and their joy is infectious.

From New York Times ● Dec. 15, 2016

Meaning was found in Siegfried’s impetuous leap and the Black Swan’s studied 32 fouettés.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 25, 2025

But she was less secure as the man-hungry doppelganger Odile in the ballet's third act, faltering on her fouettés and finally abandoning those whipping turns prematurely.

From Washington Post ● Jul. 12, 2019

For this ballerina, performing 32 fouettés — those flashy whipping turns made famous in “Swan Lake” — is like a rest step, she once told me.

From New York Times ● Jul. 13, 2018

Back then, watching Svetlana Khorkina was “like seeing a giraffe perfectly execute the 32 fouettés in Swan Lake.”

From Slate ● Aug. 15, 2016

Pirouettes – or, alternatively, fouettés – are a cinematic gift.

From The Guardian ● Jan. 7, 2011

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