BALLET • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Ballet

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/bælˈeɪ/ Listen

noun

Ballet n.

An artistic dance performed as a theatrical entertainment, or an interlude, by a number of persons, usually women. Sometimes, a scene accompanied by pantomime and dancing.

The company of persons who perform the ballet.

(Mus.) A light part song, or madrigal, with a fa la burden or chorus, most common with the Elizabethan madrigal composers; also spelled ballett.

(Her.) A bearing in coats of arms, representing one or more balls, which are denominated bezants, plates, etc., according to color.

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Etymology of 'Ballet'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Ballet" Quotes from Famous Books

... about how we did things. For instance the way we took off our pants was like ballet, simultaneously crouching a little on the left foot and whipping the right leg out of its sheath in one movement, all ready to jump without tripping ourselves if the other person did anything funny, and then skinning down the left pants-leg with ...

— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... a killing-day, and leave their homes and occupations, to flock and witness the cutting off of a head. Do we crowd to see Mr. Macready in the new tragedy, or Mademoiselle Ellssler in her last new ballet and flesh-colored stockinnet pantaloons, out of a pure love of abstract poetry and beauty; or from a strong notion that we shall be excited, in different ways, by the actor and the dancer? And so, as we go to have a meal of fictitious terror at the tragedy, of something more ...

— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... poetry; and except the coup d'oeil, which was magnificent, it was poor work. It was on the subject of Constantine and Crispus—marvellous good matter, I assure you. I came home at half-past nine, without waiting the ballet, but I was dog-sick of the whole of it. Went to the Studij to-day. I had no answer to my memorial to the Minister of the Interior, which it seems is necessary to make any copies from the old romances. I find it is an affair of State, and Monsieur ——- can only hope ...

— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... see the new ballet," the youth exhorted him earnestly; not that he cared whether the hairdresser went or not, but because he wanted to talk about the ballet ...

— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey

... those pictures that pursue the homeless one from house to house—The Huguenot Lovers, The First Quarrel, The Wedding Breakfast, Psyche at the Fountain. The mantel's chastely severe outline was ingloriously veiled behind some pert drapery drawn rakishly askew like the sashes of the Amazonian ballet. Upon it was some desolate flotsam cast aside by the room's marooned when a lucky sail had borne them to a fresh port—a trifling vase or two, pictures of actresses, a medicine bottle, some stray cards out of ...

— The Four Million • O. Henry

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