{"id":563,"date":"2007-12-14T17:37:42","date_gmt":"2007-12-14T16:37:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/14\/going-to-the-ball\/"},"modified":"2007-12-14T17:37:42","modified_gmt":"2007-12-14T16:37:42","slug":"going-to-the-ball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=563","title":{"rendered":"Going to the ball"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This evening I&#8217;ll be going to the office Christmas party. This year it&#8217;s called &#8220;the Ice Ball&#8221;, which got me thinking about the names of such events.<\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/index.php?term=ball\">ball<\/a>, as in a formal party involving dancing, comes from the Greek, <em>ballizein<\/em>, to dance, jump about, via the Latin <em>ballare<\/em>, to dance, and the Old French <em>baller<\/em>, to dance. The words ballet and ballad share the same root, as does <em>bailar<\/em> (to dance) in Spanish and Portuguese.<\/p>\n<p>The word <a href=\"http:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/index.php?search=dance&#038;searchmode=none\">dance<\/a> comes from the Old French <em>dancier<\/em>, which possibly came from Frankish.<\/p>\n<p>Other dance names include:<br \/>\n<strong>waltz<\/strong>, from the German <em>walzen<\/em>, to roll, dance<br \/>\n<strong>polka<\/strong>, from the Czech <em>polka<\/em>, Polish woman, or from <em>pulka<\/em>, half, for the half-steps of Bohemian peasant dances<br \/>\n<strong>tango<\/strong>, from Argentine Spanish <em>tango<\/em>, which was originally the name of an African-American drum dance, and possibly came from a Niger-Congo language.<br \/>\n<strong>jig<\/strong>, from the Middle French <em>giguer<\/em>, to dance; or from the German <em>Geige<\/em>, violin, meaning a piece of sport or trick.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/index.php?search=dance&#038;searchmode=none\">More information about the etymology of the names of dances<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This evening I&#8217;ll be going to the office Christmas party. This year it&#8217;s called &#8220;the Ice Ball&#8221;, which got me thinking about the names of such events. A ball, as in a formal party involving dancing, comes from the Greek, ballizein, to dance, jump about, via the Latin ballare, to dance, and the Old French [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}