Tarantella
WordNet
noun
(1) A lively whirling Italian dance for two persons
(2) Music composed in six-eight time for dancing the tarantella
WiktionaryText
Etymology
From tarantella, a diminutive of Taranto, a town in southern Italy (but popularly associated with tarantola ‘tarantula’, on the belief that the dance was variously a result of, or cure for, its bite).
Noun
- A rapid dance in 6/8 time, originating in Italy, or a piece of music for such a dance.
Quotations
- 1868 — Louisa May Alcott, Little Women ch. 37
- The set in which they found themselves was composed of English, and Amy was compelled to walk decorously through a cotillion, feeling all the while as if she could dance the tarantella with relish.
- 1895 — Bret Harte, The Devotion of Enriquez
- "A tarantella, I presume?" blandly suggested the doctor.
- Miss Mannersley stopped, and rose carelessly from the piano. "It is a Moorish gypsy song of the fifteenth century," she said dryly.
- 1922 — Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion ch. v
- We learn to understand why our addled minds seize so little with precision, why they are caught up and tossed about in a kind of tarantella by headlines and catch-words, why so often they cannot tell things apart or discern identity in apparent differences.