"dance with the devil" meaning in English

See dance with the devil in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Forms: dances with the devil [present, singular, third-person], dancing with the devil [participle, present], danced with the devil [participle, past], danced with the devil [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} dance with the devil (third-person singular simple present dances with the devil, present participle dancing with the devil, simple past and past participle danced with the devil)
  1. (informal, idiomatic) To engage in risky and immoral behavior. Tags: idiomatic, informal Categories (topical): Ethics

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for dance with the devil meaning in English (1.7kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "dances with the devil",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "dancing with the devil",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "danced with the devil",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "danced with the devil",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "dance with the devil (third-person singular simple present dances with the devil, present participle dancing with the devil, simple past and past participle danced with the devil)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
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          "source": "w"
        },
        {
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          "name": "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
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            "Entry maintenance"
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        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
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            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Ethics",
          "orig": "en:Ethics",
          "parents": [
            "Philosophy",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To engage in risky and immoral behavior."
      ],
      "id": "en-dance_with_the_devil-en-verb-67HLtOMG",
      "links": [
        [
          "engage",
          "engage"
        ],
        [
          "risky",
          "risky"
        ],
        [
          "immoral",
          "immoral"
        ],
        [
          "behavior",
          "behavior"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal, idiomatic) To engage in risky and immoral behavior."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "informal"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "dance with the devil"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "dances with the devil",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "dancing with the devil",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "danced with the devil",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "danced with the devil",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "dance with the devil (third-person singular simple present dances with the devil, present participle dancing with the devil, simple past and past participle danced with the devil)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
        "English idioms",
        "English informal terms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English verbs",
        "en:Ethics"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To engage in risky and immoral behavior."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "engage",
          "engage"
        ],
        [
          "risky",
          "risky"
        ],
        [
          "immoral",
          "immoral"
        ],
        [
          "behavior",
          "behavior"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal, idiomatic) To engage in risky and immoral behavior."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "informal"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "dance with the devil"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.