song and dance
1
7.2
- noun
- Informal
:
excusa
- With Ziegfeld, he was featured in the sort of brief comic sketches that served as interludes between the main attractions of the show: the song and dance numbers for beautiful women that were Ziegfeld's specialty.
For the last third of the entire episode, John Oliver does a song and dance about all of these terrible things that they accused Bob Murray of doing.
- For the last third of the entire episode, John Oliver does a song and dance about all of these terrible things that they accused Bob Murray of doing.
- I mean, you make a big song and dance about things, but once you knuckle into it, you will actually, that's the thing.
- And so instead of so I used to think pitching was like this kind of song and dance, like I do a little tap shoot and they like check out their checkbook.
- And, you know, don't allow have all these people come and fancy gowns and sit there with celebrity scientists and I don't know, song and dance, whatever.
Examples
-
Once a week for four weeks, the university music teacher taught a song and dance to different classes of elementary music students.
Academic text (2006) -
It's this whole song and dance that you don't want to put up with.
-
Give me this nice song and dance.
-
Anyway, don't make a song and dance about it.
-
Okay, it's the same old song and dance... ...but busting an international arms dealer out of jail?
-
I mean, you make a big song and dance about things, but once you knuckle into it, you will actually, that's the thing.
-
For the last third of the entire episode, John Oliver does a song and dance about all of these terrible things that they accused Bob Murray of doing.
-
An awful lot of what those folks go through in these whole song and dances of adaptation are merely spandrels.
-
At a Sunday school entertainment, our budding starlet leapt onto the church platform and launched into a naughty song and dance to the amusement of the children before the pastor pulled her off.
Fiction book (2000) -
I don't want to hear your song and dance about why you were late; just tell me the truth.
Synonyms
15
3.4
A made-up story told to hide the truth or deceive people
10
4.6
A made-up story used to avoid blame or trick people
1
6.3
An absurd lie used to avoid blame or trick someone
1
5.5
A made up story told to hide the truth
Antonyms
How Convincing
∞
1.0
859
1.7
- Informal
1
7.2
29
6.5
- Literature
19
4.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a theatrical performance featuring both singing and dancing' follows directly from combining 'song' + 'and' + 'dance' — the conjunction explicitly signals the two activities together. This coordinated, compositional structure is cross-linguistically common and follows a standard English pattern, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words will readily understand it.
Etymology
Song and dance comes from the image of someone putting on a little show, using a song and a dance to hide the real reason or to distract people. So when someone gives a 'song and dance', they are telling a complicated or silly excuse.