Daunce

Part of speech: verb, noun

Definitions

1. To move the body rhythmically and expressively to the beat or melody of music
2. To perform a series of coordinated steps and motions in time with musical accompaniment
3. To engage in rhythmic bodily movement as a form of entertainment or artistic expression to music

Etymology: "Daunce" is simply an older spelling of "dance," and the form survived in print well after the modern spelling had taken hold. The verb it belongs to came into Middle English as "dauncen," borrowed from Anglo-Norman "dauncer," which goes back to a Vulgar Latin form, "*dantiāre," whose origin is uncertain. That makes "dance" a sort of cousin of "danza," the Italian word for the same activity, the two having split off from the same source and entered English and Italian separately. The older English word it displaced is worth knowing about. Before "dance" took over, Old English speakers used "sealtian" for the activity, and "frīcian" as well, while "hlēapan," meaning "to leap," also covered dancing and partly gave way to the new term. The modern verb "leap" is the surviving descendant of that older Germanic word, so dancing once shared vocabulary with jumping.