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belly dance

noun

Etymology

Calque of French danse du ventre, equivalent to belly + dance. First attested in English in 1889, in an article about that year's Exposition Universelle in Paris in the November 22 edition of the Yorkshire Factory Times: "A café in the Rue du Caire attracted 2,000 spectators daily to see the ‘belly dance’, and realised a total of 400,000 francs." Early sources also used the French term danse du ventre as-is.

  1. derived from *dantiāre✻
  2. derived from dancier
  3. inherited from dauncen
  4. formed as belly dance — “belly + dance”

Definitions

  1. A form of dance originating in the Middle East and characterized by movements of the…

    A form of dance originating in the Middle East and characterized by movements of the torso.

  2. To perform a belly dance.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for belly dance. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA