break dance
1
3.6
- noun
- /ˈbreɪk dæns/
:
break dance
- During the festival, people showed off their skills in break dance, executing impressive spins and flips on the pavement.
Her dance was like modern dance meets break dance.
- Her dance was like modern dance meets break dance.
Examples
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Once I was told by a person I met on the street that they said, oh, I just came from a break dance concert and it was incredible.
-
This is break dance.
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At the community center, young dancers practiced their break dance routines to the beat of energetic hip-hop music.
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The local competition featured a break dance showcase, with participants demonstrating various acrobatic moves and styles.
Synonyms
4
3.7
An energetic street dance with flips and spins often to hip-hop music
2
3.2
A solo street dance with fast acrobatic moves on the ground to hip-hop music
How Acrobatic
Surface Forms
Morphology
The component 'dance' is transparent, but 'break' in this MWE names a specific dance tradition (from musical "breaks") rather than the common sense 'to separate' or 'to damage'. A B1 learner who knows the basic meanings may guess it refers to an energetic or unusual kind of dancing but would not reliably infer the culturally specific, acrobatic breakdancing sense without prior exposure, so the expression is only partially predictable.
Etymology
Break dance may come from the short break in old funk and soul records when the drums play alone. Dancers used that moment to show fast, impressive moves, so the name came to mean the energetic street dance it is today.