sword dance

noun

any of various dances, usually performed by men, in which swords are ceremonially flourished or are laid on the ground and danced around.

Words nearby sword dance

sword, sword bayonet, sword bean, sword belt, sword cane, sword dance, sword fern, sword grass, sword knot, sword lily, sword of damocles

Origin of sword dance

First recorded in 1595–1605

OTHER WORDS FROM sword dance

sword dancer, noun

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2020

Examples from the Web for sword dance

Bells too, so characteristic of the morris, are mentioned in some Continental accounts of the sword-dance.
Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan|Clement A. Miles
Do you think any one can dance the sword-dance without the pipes?
Macleod of Dare|William Black
A few years since, a party of Papa-men came to dance the sword-dance at Lerwick as a public exhibition with great applause.
Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume 4 (of 10)|John Gibson Lockhart.
It is said that when Cruikshank was eighty-three, he executed a sword-dance before an old officer who had mentally buried him.
George Cruikshank|W. H. Chesson

Round and round that holocaust the thousands did their sword-dance, yelling as the devils yelled at Khinjan's birth.
King--of the Khyber Rifles|Talbot Mundy

British Dictionary definitions for sword dance

sword dance

noun

a dance in which the performers dance nimbly over swords on the ground or brandish them in the air

Derived forms of sword dance

sword dancer, nounsword dancing, noun

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