Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To dance to rock music.
  • intransitive verb Informal To start doing something; begin.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Alternative spelling of rock and roll.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a genre of popular music originating in the 1950s; a blend of black rhythm-and-blues with white country-and-western

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The musicians who made rock-and-roll the chief rival of country music on the popular music charts during the 1960s and early 1970s were deeply influenced by black working-class culture.

    A Renegade History of the United States Thaddeus Russell 2010

  • From 1946 to 1955, American cultural centers Amerikahäuser set up in West German cities to spread U.S. influence provided libraries with open stacks, lectures, classical music concerts, and showings of educational films but did not show Hollywood movies or sponsor concerts of jazz or rock-and-roll.

    A Renegade History of the United States Thaddeus Russell 2010

  • The best-known offshoot of the rock-and-roll movement, the hippies of the 1960s and 1970s, are well known for their libertine attitudes but, ironically, they found themselves in the same contradictory place as their redneck archenemies.

    A Renegade History of the United States Thaddeus Russell 2010

  • Prima chided his generation for attacking rock-and-roll and thereby renouncing its primitive past.

    A Renegade History of the United States Thaddeus Russell 2010

  • The most influential of the new dances, which scholars cite as the sources of both swing dance and the gyrations at early rock-and-roll dances, were the turkey trot, the fox-trot, the Charleston, and the Texas Tommy.

    A Renegade History of the United States Thaddeus Russell 2010

  • Like rock-and-roll, Hollywood movies and comic books received just as much scorn from American political leaders as they did from Eastern Bloc authorities.

    A Renegade History of the United States Thaddeus Russell 2010

  • If it helps to lighten things up, add this incantation: Let the gods shake-and-bake me with their spiritual rock-and-roll.

    The Bushman Way of Tracking God PhD Bradford Keeney 2010

  • Welcome to the rock-and-roll spirited movement that has no reason.

    The Bushman Way of Tracking God PhD Bradford Keeney 2010

  • But no music has been the object of more apocalyptic fears than rock-and-roll in 1950s America.

    A Renegade History of the United States Thaddeus Russell 2010

  • Not only did this “vulgar” and “decadent” culture continue to spread, but as the 1950s ended, it mutated into something even worse: rock-and-roll.

    A Renegade History of the United States Thaddeus Russell 2010

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