Etymology

belly dance

Today it means: A form of dance originating in the Middle East and characterized by movements of the torso. Full definition →

French danse du ventre
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The story

  1. French · calque ofdanse du ventre
  2. English todaybelly dance

Calque of French danse du ventre, equivalent to belly + dance. First attested in English in 1889, in an article about that year's Exposition Universelle in Paris in the November 22 edition of the Yorkshire Factory Times: "A café in the Rue du Caire attracted 2,000 spectators daily to see the ‘belly dance’, and realised a total of 400,000 francs." Early sources also used the French term danse du ventre as-is.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.