Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🕺 A group dance 🕺 To do the dance
to square dance

to square dance

3 3.3
To dance with four couples in a square led by a caller
  • verb
  • /skwɛr dæns/
  • US
translation icon : bailar cuadrado
  • At the community center, everyone joined together to square dance to the lively music.
  • learn how to square dance

Examples

  • I two-stepped at the American Legion Hut and square danced at the Saturday night hootenanny.

    Academic text (1992)

  • This time, this Saturday night of fling, when the square-dance caller chants out to the gents dosiedoe, and a little more doe, well, there stands Berneta

    Fiction book (1993)

  • I'm not square dancing with you people.

    Blood Hook (1987)

  • I didn't know you square danced.

    The Hot Flashes (2013)

  • Next, I suppose you'll want me to go square-dancing with Patrick.

    Come Play (2020)

  • Not so different from those barns where Ruby watched her parents square dance on Saturdays, back in the 1920s.

    Fiction book (2001)

  • WHY WASTE TIME WITH THIS-- THIS SQUARE DANCE THING?

    Ground Control (1998)

  • One I recall was square dancing at a social mixer when my partner for the set asked me what my major was; upon learning that it was astrophysics, he walked off the dance floor, leaving seven of us to improvise.

    Academic text (1993)

  • Some elderly locals square-dance in barns on the weekends, and streets keep their old names: Sodom Trail, Nooseneck Hill.

    Blog text (1)

  • I learned to square dance in the sweltering upper story of a village hall in Ohio, sawdust underfoot, a girl hooked to my elbow, the wail of fiddles and shouts of callers ringing in my ears.

    Fiction book (1991)

Synonyms

to dance
vsto square dance
579 1.0

To move quickly and lightly from side to side or up and down

focuses on fixed group patterns led by a caller rather than free movement

Surface Forms

square dance infinitive
square danced past
square danced past participle
square dancing present participle
square dances third person singular

Morphology

square + dance

The meaning 'to perform a square dance' is directly compositional from 'square' (a specific formation/shape) + 'dance' (a type of dance): it names a dance done in a square formation. This follows a regular modifier+noun pattern that a B1 learner who knows both words can reasonably infer, although precise cultural details (caller, specific figures) would need exposure.

Etymology

Square dance: The verb square dance simply means to do a square dance — people move in a square with others as a 'caller' tells the steps, so it means 'to take part in that set group dance'.