Definition of "gavotte" [gavotte]

• A French peasant dance of Baroque origin in moderately quick duple meter. (noun)
• Music for this dance. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Well, at the end of each term there was what they called an "exhibition ball," in which the scholars danced cotillons and country-dances; also something called a "gavotte," and I think one or more walked a minuet."
• "Between the two large explosions in the first movement, violin and orchestra engage in a stately kind of gavotte that eventually gathers to a critical mass and lunges forth in Russian figures of mass and fury."
• "When she founded NYBDC in 1976, it was an academic discipline focused on reconstructing the steps of old dances, their names — among them the minuet and gavotte — familiar from the music of Bach and Handel."