dance n.1
1. sexual intercourse.
 | Canterbury Tales General Prologue n.p.: Of remedies of love she [i.e. the Wife of Bath] knew parchaunce, For she coude of that art the olde daunce. | |
| Pastime of Pleasure 399: [Follow] the trace of dame natures daunce And thus in doynge you shall your seruaunt hele Of his dysease. | |
| Cupid’s Revenge II i: Troths at fifteen we will plight, And will tread a Dance each night, In the fields, or by the Fire, With the youths that have desire. | |
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Strappado 81: [Many maids] when shamefull dance is done . . . wish they had begun Many yeeres before. | |
| ‘A Bawd’ in Works (1869) II 96: There are many pretty prouocatory dances, as the kising dance, [...] and such like. | |
| Man’s the Master I i: This is the pretty foot belonging to a leg, which, though I say’t, was fit to lead a dance in Hymen’s hall. | |
| ‘Winchester Wedding’ in Pepys Ballads (1987) IV 106: Sukey that danc’d with the Cushion, an hour from the room had been gone, And Barnaby knew by her blushing, that some other Dance had been done. | |
| ‘Answer to Unconstant William’ in Pepys Ballads (1987) V 156: tells how a lady ‘came to my Chamber one Night, and ... I taught her a Dance which she ne’r knew before’. | |
| Satirist (London) 8 Jan. 13/2: The Paris wits are giggling, O! / At the niggling, figgling, wriggling, O! / [...] / While the good old dance is jiggling, O! | |
| ‘Maids Will Believe’ in Fal-Lal Songster in Spedding & Watt (eds) Bawdy Songbooks (2011) III 5: So to church we both went, and at night had a dance. |
2. a hanging.
| Hye Way to the Spyttel House Biii: The hang man shall lede the daunce at the ende . | |
| Virgil Travestie (1765) Bk IV 141: Till at the last in mortal Trance / She did conclude the dismal dance. | |
| Crackfart & Tony 14: He becomes [...] fit only for the fire, or to take a Dance [...] at Tyburn. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | in Songs and Ballads of the Amer. Revolution (1855) 107: These freemen will boldly agree, / To give ’em a dance upon Liberty Tree. | |
| Journal of Murder in Gaddis & Long (2002) 155: I look forward to a seat in the electric chaire or dance on the end of a rope. | |
| ‘Five Men and a Horse’ in Folk-Say 285: A chance to beat the law’s set rules – / Or dance the hangman’s dance. | |
| Skeletons 221: What if the slightest turn of the chain wheel and the hand rods resulted in a dance of death upon the ropes? |
In compounds
1. (also dancehouse) the execution chamber [Goldin et al., Dict. of Amer. Und. Lingo (1950), suggests this is ‘erroneously used’].
| Journal of Murder in Gaddis & Long (2002) 116: Dance hall—death house. | |
| Derby Dly Teleg. 7 Aug. 6/4: That guy’s going to the ‘dance-hall’ (execution shed) to be burned up. | |
| Argot: Dict. of Und. Sl. 15: dance hall, dance house-prison death house, electric chair. | |
| Rebellion of Leo McGuire (1953) 213: I was [...] locked up in the East Wing to wait for the day when they were to take me into the dance hall adjoining. | |
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | Scarperer (1966) 33: ‘That’s the door of the hang-house,’ [...] ‘I know,’ said Tralee Trembles. ‘We used to call it the dance-hall.’. |
2. the cell in which a prisoner is placed before being executed.
| It’s a Racket! 223: dance hall—Cell or cell block in prison where criminals sentenced to death are confined before execution. | |
| Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing 304: He was being escorted to the ‘dance-hall,’ the prison term for the pre-execution chamber. | |
| et al. DAUL 56/1: Dance Hall, the. (P) The wing in which condemned men spend their last few hours. | |
| New Yorker 3 Apr. 🌐 The man who once showed me where the chair had been, and the switch, and the so-called Dance Hall [...] that condemned inmates passed through on their last walk. |
In phrases
(US) to be hanged.
| ‘$106,000 Blood Money’ Story Omnibus (1966) 346: The old man and I are both due to step off if we’re caught. And you’ll do the dance with us, I’ll see to that. |
SE in slang uses
In phrases
to act in a given manner, presumably active, defined by the n.
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Bulletin (Sydney) 4 Apr. 13/2: This all comes through officious interference in a fair fight. Plunging in between a man and his wife when they are doing the axe-handle dance round the back yard is bad enough, but the man who would undertake to play the peacemaker between two bulls, would sit on a lighted powder blast to keep the thing from bursting. |