Dictionaries › English

ballet

Pronunciation: /ˈbæleɪ/

The English word “ballet” has 7 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A classical form of dance.
  2. A theatrical presentation of such dancing, usually with music, sometimes in the form of a story.
  3. The company of persons who perform this dance.
  4. A light part song, frequently with a fa-la-la chorus, common among Elizabethan and Italian Renaissance composers.
  5. A (small) ball i.e. roundel on a coat of arms, called a bezant, plate, etc., according to colour.
  6. Any intricate series of operations involving coordination between individuals.

verb

  1. To perform an action reminiscent of ballet dancing.

Etymology

Borrowed from French ballet, from Italian balletto (“short dance, ballet”), diminutive form of ballo (“group dance”) (cognate with Old French bal, whence English ball), from Late Latin ballō (“to dance”).

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “ballet” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.