Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The dance of death (which see, under dance, n.).

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Captain Universe protests that he was only trying to protect her, but Deathcry informs him that if he does it again, she will ‘dance the death-dance with him.’

    Annihilation Conquest: Star-Lord #2 & #3 | Major Spoilers - Comic Book Reviews and News 2009

  • Then the Ncomi started and carried on their weird, complicated death-dance.

    Travels in West Africa 2003

  • Though they seemed to be caught in a hellish death-dance, she could no more stop loving him than she could stop her own heartbeat.

    Strangers In the Night Linda Howard 2001

  • Some jerked in the death-dance of the arrow-struck.

    Dalamar the Dark Berberick, Nancy Varian 2000

  • I left him staring at the death-dance of the lacewings and went to bed.

    Dragonfly in Amber Gabaldon, Diana 1992

  • Fighter-bombers streaked across the sky and helicopters performed their own death-dance.

    Red Storm Rising Clancy, Tom, 1947- 1986

  • Too much blood and pain knotted them into this death-dance.

    The Swordbearer Cook, Glen 1982

  • We never remember to have seen a stronger _levée en masse_ of cambric handkerchiefs in honour of O'Neill's _Mrs Haller_, or Siddons's _Isabella_, than of the ballet of "Nina;" while the affecting death-dance in "Masaniello" is still fresh in the memory of the admirers of Pauline Leroux.

    Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 341, March, 1844 Various

  • At this moment, how many men, in all the long Golgotha that stretches from Belfort to the sea, must be trying to cheat their boredom and their misery with that grand gesture of slamming the cards down to take a trick, while in their ears, like tom-toms, pounds the death-dance of the guns.

    One Man's Initiation—1917 John Dos Passos 1933

  • They piled the dead wood upon it before they lay down; as one resinous branch after another caught fire the trees danced round in giant shadows, as though they were doing a death-dance for their limbs on the funeral pyre.

    Captivity M. Leonora Eyles 1924

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