cushion dance

English

Alternative forms

• cushion-dance

Noun

cushion dance (plural cushion dances)

1. (historical) A dance in which one person carries a cushion around the room, placing it before someone he or she wishes to kiss, after which kiss the chosen person takes up the cushion and continues the dance.

   Synonym: kissing dance

   • 1839 September, Personal Narrative of Tristram Dumps, Esq., “The New Monthly Magazine”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), volume 62, number 225, page 132:

     I'm aa for the cushion dance; I wad na give a baubee for a baa withoot that.

   • 2013, Christopher Marsh, Music and Society in Early Modern England, page 338:

     The famous 'cushion dance' was physically safer, though its association with flirtatious interaction ensured a measure of controversy.

   • 2017, Allison Levy, Playthings in Early Modernity, page 45:

     The company in the emblem appears to be of a higher status than the villagers who dance the cushion dance in Tortworth, but the way in which the man approaches the seated woman, holding the cushion in one hand and doffing his hat with the other while he bows, is likely similar to the village version.

   • 2019, “Dot”, in Dion Boucicault, editor, America's Lost Plays, Vol. I: Forbidden Fruit and Other Plays, page 149:

     They all take partners and places for a cushion dance.