Meanings
plural dress circles
- A gallery in a theater, generally the one containing the prominent and more expensive seats.
This concerned complaints arising under the Civil Rights Act of 1875 by blacks denied hotel accommodations in Kansas and Missouri, excluded from the ladies' car of a train in Tennessee, and barred from the dress circle of a theater in San Francisco and from the Grand Opera House of New York City.
2019, Eric Foner, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution
Synonyms & antonyms
nouna curved section or tier of seats in a hall or theater or opera house; usually the first tier above the orchestra
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
Formal dress clothing was generally worn in this gallery.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
dress circle. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dress%20circle
“dress circle.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dress%20circle. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “dress circle,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dress%20circle.
Source: dress circle on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.