tarantella

American  

[tar-uhn-tel-uh] / ˌtær ənˈtɛl ə /

noun

1. a rapid, whirling southern Italian dance in very quick sextuple, originally quadruple, meter, usually performed by a single couple, and formerly supposed to be a remedy for tarantism.

2. a piece of music either for the dance or in its rhythm.

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tarantella British  

/ ˌtærənˈtɛlə /

noun

1. a peasant dance from S Italy

2. a piece of music composed for or in the rhythm of this dance, in fast six-eight time

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Etymology

Origin of tarantella

1775–85; < Italian, equivalent to Tarant ( o ) Taranto + -ella -elle

Explanation

A quick, spirited Italian folk dance that involves much spinning and often the playing of tambourines is called the tarantella. If you have a creepy feeling that tarantella has something to do with spiders, your instincts are not too far off. A tarantella is not an eight-legged creature but is in fact a dance, or the music for it, in lively 6/8 time. It gets its name from the Italian port of Taranto, as does the tarantula. The words are united in an old folk belief that frenzied dancing was required to avoid death after a tarantula bite.

Example Sentences

Alarms ding every couple of minutes, accentuating the insanity of Donna's frenetic tarantella between her wine glass, a blazing stove, and a countertop stacked with pots and pans in use or used up.

From Salon • Jun. 29, 2023

That couldn’t last forever, though: At the coda of that tarantella finale, here impressively cohesive amid increasingly frantic chorales and unstable runs, Death arrives in a sudden minor-key turn, delivered in grandly Romantic fashion.

From New York Times • Apr. 22, 2022

Then I realized such a pose had been used by John Singer Sargent, of a woman dancing the tarantella in his moody masterpiece “El Jaleo.”

From Washington Post • Jun. 26, 2020

In the symphony, the tarantella material undergoes hallucinatory permutations, sometimes slowing to a crawl and sometimes accelerating in a panic.

From The New Yorker • May 30, 2019

What began as a dramatically delusory ploy to recapture her father’s attention turned into a sad tarantella of girlish desperation.

From "The Great Santini" by Pat Conroy