pirouette

Borrowed from French pirouette, see there for more; attested since 1706.^[1]

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˌpɪ.ɹʊˈɛt/, /ˌpɪ.ɹuːˈɛt/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˌpɪ.ɹəˈwɛt/, /ˌpɪ.ɹuːˈɛt/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛt

pirouette (plural pirouettes)

1. A whirling or turning on the toes in dancing, primarily in ballet.
   • 1846, Mr. M. A. Titmarsh [pseudonym; W. M. Thackeray], Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo […] , London: Chapman and Hall:

     […] like what?—like the most beautiful pirouette by [Marie] Taglioni, let us say.

   • 1868–1869, Louisa M[ay] Alcott, Little Women: […], (please specify |part=1 or 2), Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, →OCLC:

     But the Emperor’s friend covered himself with glory, for he danced everything, whether he knew it or not, and introduced impromptu pirouettes when the figures bewildered him..

   • 2023 October 14, HarryBlank, “Face Time”, in SCP Foundation‎^[1], archived from the original on 23 May 2024:

     "Serious as cognitohazard." Lillihammer danced down the corridor towards them, doing little pirouettes and leaping from toe to toe. "Reuben Wirth no longer exists. Gonna have to get Forsythe to do that brain scan to make sure I'm clean, but otherwise yeah. Poof."

   • 2025, “Pay Streak”, in Scratch It, performed by U.S. Girls:

     There is no west, the sun doesn't rise / No, the sun never rests / As the Earth leans into its forever pirouette

2. The whirling about of a horse.
3. A wooden mouthpiece assembly or lip rest used in some European double-reed instruments.

pirouette (third-person singular simple present pirouettes, present participle pirouetting, simple past and past participle pirouetted)

1. (intransitive) To perform a pirouette; to whirl on the toes, like a dancer.
   • 1846, Charles Dickens, Pictures from Italy, London: […] Bradbury & Evans, […], →OCLC:

     The way in which they dance; the height to which they spring; the impossible and inhuman extent to which they pirouette; […] .

   • 1885 September, H[enry] Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, […], published 1887, →OCLC:

     At last they paused, and a beautiful young woman sprang out of the ranks and began to pirouette in front of us with a grace and vigour which would have put most ballet girls to shame.

   • 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter VIII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:

     I came down like a sack of coals. The pulse was rapid, the blood pressure high, and for awhile the Blue Room pirouetted about me like an adagio dancer.

• Glossary of ballet on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Pirouette (dressage) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “pirouette”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.

Borrowed from French pirouette, see there for more.

• IPA^(key): /ˌpi.ruˈɛ.tə/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: pi‧rou‧et‧te
• Rhymes: -ɛtə

pirouette f (plural pirouettes or pirouetten, no diminutive)

1. pirouette

• IPA^(key): /pi.ʁwɛt/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Audio (France (Toulouse)):

  (file)

From a Gallo-Roman root *pir- („peg, plug“, hence Italian piruolo (“peg top”)) and -ette (diminutive suffix). The word originally meant a “spinning top” (15th century).^[1]

pirouette f (plural pirouettes)

1. pirouette; a whirling or turning on the toes in dancing
   • 1857, Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary […]‎^[2], Paris: Michel Lévy Frères; republished as Eleanor Marx, transl., Madame Bovary, 1886:

     — Ah! je m'en moque pas mal! dit Charles en faisant une pirouette. La santé avant tout! Tu as tort!

     “Well, what the deuce do I care for that?” said Charles, making a pirouette. “Health before everything! You are wrong.”

2. (sports, equestrians) a whirling volt movement made by a horse

• pirouetter

pirouette

1. inflection of pirouetter:
   1. first/third-person singular present indicative/subjunctive
   2. second-person singular imperative

• “pirouette”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012
• Vocabulaire de la danse classique on the French Wikipedia.Wikipedia ^fr