ballet

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A classical dance form characterized by grace and precision of movement and by elaborate formal gestures, steps, and poses.
2. n. A theatrical presentation of group or solo dancing to a musical accompaniment, usually with costume and scenic effects, conveying a story or theme.
3. n. A musical composition written or used for this dance form.
4. n. A company or group that performs ballet.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A little ball: in heraldry, a bearing in coats of arms, denominated, according to the color, bezants, plates, hurts, etc.
2. n. A spectacular dance, more or less elaborate in steps, poses, and costumes, in which a number of performers, chiefly females, take part. It is led or conducted by one or more chief dancers or coryphées, and is usually incidental to an operatic or other dramatic representation.
3. n. A complete pantomime or theatrical representation, in which a story is told, and actions, characters, and passions are represented, by gestures and grouping, accompanied by characteristic or illustrative music, dancing, and often rich scenery and decorations.
4. n. The corps of dancers who perform ballets.
5. To express by dancing or in a ballet.
6. An obsolete form of ballad.
7. n. The music to which a ballet is danced.
8. n. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially in England, a light glee-like madrigal or part-song, often with a fa-la burden. See fa-la.
9. n. In the eighteenth century, a series of instrumental dances properly in the same key and usually for stringed instruments; a suite (which see). The dramatic ballet (see def. 2) was the national form of drama in France; it originated in the sixteenth century, and in the seventeenth coalesced with the Italian musical drama, giving rise to the early type of French opera.

Wiktionary

1. n. A classical form of dance.
2. n. A theatrical presentation of such dancing, usually with music, sometimes in the form of story.
3. n. The company of persons who perform this dance.
4. n. music A light part song, or madrigal, with a fa-la burden or chorus, most common with the Elizabethan madrigal composers.
5. n. heraldry A bearing in coats of arms representing one or more balls, called bezants, plates, etc., according to colour.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. 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.
2. n. The company of persons who perform the ballet.
3. n. (Mus.) A light part song, or madrigal, with a fa la burden or chorus, -- most common with the Elizabethan madrigal composers; -- also spelled ballett.
4. n. (Her.) A bearing in coats of arms, representing one or more balls, which are denominated bezants, plates, etc., according to color.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. music written for a ballet
2. n. a theatrical representation of a story that is performed to music by trained dancers