rigadoon

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rig·a·doon

(rĭg′ə-do͞on′) or ri·gau·don (rē-gô-dōN′) also rig·o·don (rĭg′ə-dŏn′)

1. A lively jumping quickstep for two couples, usually in rapid duple meter.

2. The music for this dance.

[French rigaudon, rigodon, of unknown origin.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

rigadoon

(ˌrɪɡəˈduːn) or

rigaudon

1. (Dancing) an old Provençal couple dance, light and graceful, in lively duple time

2. (Music, other) a piece of music for or in the rhythm of this dance

[C17: from French, allegedly from its inventor Rigaud, a dancing master at Marseille]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

rig•a•doon

(ˌrɪg əˈdun)

n.

1. a dance of the 17th and 18th centuries in quick duple meter.

2. music for this dance.

[1685–95; < French rigaudon, perhaps from the surname Rigaud]

Translations

rigodón

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References in classic literature ?

Like travellers through a mist: They mocked the moon in a rigadoon

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"Alice, dance." --and dance she would, not in such court-like measures as she had learned abroad, but Some high-paced jig, or hop-skip rigadoon, befitting the brisk lasses at a rustic merry-making.

View in context

RIGADOON A Lively jig-like dance for a couple B Most forward sail of a ship C Drunken sailor who am I?

TIME OUT EXTRA

They glided past, they glided fast, Like travelers through a mist: They mocked the moon in a rigadoon Of delicate turn and twist, And with formal pace and loathsome grace The phantoms kept their tryst.

Ozdemir Asaf's translation of The Ballad of Reading Gaol: A Bermanian approach

I'm 72 now and take care of this wonderful place (Rigadoon Homestead) by myself, so you can understand my situation here.

Too much of a good thing!

It is sung in a distinctly Acadian French to the traditional sound of the fiddle and a rigadoon beat, until it is brought to a close with a satirical twist.

The utopia/dystopia of Latin America's margins: writing identity in Acadia and Aztlan

in 1955, Ballets without Music, without Dancers, without Anything in 1957, and the wartime trilogy Castle to Castle, North, and Rigadoon. He published the first two segments of the trilogy between 1957 and 1960.

Louis-Ferdinand Celine

the ladies the Minuet, Rigadoon and Loure with country dances; the gentlemen the Minuet, the Hornpipe or comic dances ...' (Newcastle Journal, 17 June).

Charles Avison: discovering an Eighteenth-Century Musician

One evening a couple of years ago, my wife and I were channel-surfing and we happened to pause for no good reason at that odious "game show," The Weakest Link, a hideous electronic rigadoon that rewarded the least moronic of a sextet of ignoramuses with enough money for him or her to get a lobotomy, and there stands an extremely pretty, well-turned-out young woman in an expensive suit.

Infamy: the new fame: never has bad behavior been so rewarded with attention and accolade. Harlan Ellison offers his take on how infamy and celebrity have become one and the same

ALAN DEMPSEY came in for the plaudits after transforming reluctant hero Rigadoon into the winner of the novice handicap chase.

Huntingdon: Dempsey shines on reluctant Rigadoon

Easterby can also strike with Rigadoon in the St Modwen Amateur Riders' Handicap Chase.

Racing: Recke's raider to clear Hurdle

And in the case of a writer like Celine, who constantly staged himself as his own hero in his later works such as those epics in persecution, North and Rigadoon, it is not certain that one can speak of fiction in any clear sense.