thé dansant

[ tey dahn-sahn ]

noun

, French.

, plural thés dan·sants [tey dah, n, -, sahn].

1. a tea dance.

thé dansant

/ te dɑ̃sɑ̃ /

noun

1. a dance held while afternoon tea is served, popular in the 1920s and 1930s

Word History and Origins

Origin of thé dansant¹

literally: dancing tea

Example Sentences

There were dresses for a thé dansant, dainty and frosted, in a macaron palette.

From The New Yorker

Cousin Rose also dresses up like a maid after she makes Anna take her to a thé dansant to dance to ragtime with commoners, and one of those lads comes looking for her; Jimmy sees her kiss him and she says she’ll be his friend forever if he keeps the secret, which may be worth remembering later.

From Time

Cousin Rose also dresses up like a maid after she makes Anna take her to a thé dansant to dance to ragtime with commoners, and one of those lads comes looking for her; Jimmy sees her kiss him and she says she’ll be his friend forever if he keeps the secret, which may be worth remembering later.

From Time

She provided the texts for a series of her brother’s vocal and choral works starting in the 1980s, including a surreally retro setting of her three-poem sequence “A History of the Thé Dansant,” inspired by photographs of their parents from the 1920s.

From New York Times

She captured the brainy nostalgia of Richard Rodney Bennett’s surreally retro “History of the Thé Dansant,” but best of all were the Gurney songs — “Sleep” followed “Bierside” — performed with moving nobility.

From New York Times