See light fantastic in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
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"ref": "1905 May 12, The Evening News, Sydney, page 4, column 5:",
"text": "An officer told the Water Police Magistrate to-day how some few nights ago he had seen Williams giving an exhibition more daring than conventional, and keeping time to the dancing of her \"light fantastic\" with language that \"struck him all of a heap.\"",
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"ref": "1914 December 1, The Clarence and Richmond Examiner, Grafton, page 3, column 2:",
"text": "The Upper Four Hundred sternly setting its face against anything pertaining to the frivolous; and insisting that while there is serious work to be done there must be no light fantastic, but a truce to the pomp and shows of Vanity Fair.",
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"ref": "1918 June 28, The Cairns Post, Qld, page 4, column 5:",
"text": "Weather permitting Ragtime Rastus will dance a light fantastic, and Jefferies will once more swap punches with Johnstone in a 20-round contest at 7.30 to-night.",
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"ref": "1957 October 16, The Biz, Fairfield, NSW, page 7, column 7:",
"text": "With well-known compere, Gordon White, at the helm, the evening soon was in full swing, as dancers stepped the light fantastic to the music of Arthur Ruggles' orchestra, and were kept moving all night.",
"type": "quotation"
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],
"glosses": [
"A dance or the act of dancing."
],
"id": "en-light_fantastic-en-noun-HanXyYI3",
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"(dated) A dance or the act of dancing."
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"word": "light fantastic"
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"ref": "1911, ‘Steel Rudd’, The Book of Dan, Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, published 1970, page 87:",
"text": "He suddenly started off into a variety of light fantastic flights and jiggetty jiggetty jumps.",
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"ref": "1934 November 13, The Daily Telegraph, Sydney, page 7, column 7:",
"text": "Unseen she skipped into the Equity Court yesterday, a light fantastic figure, who brightened the dry legal proceedings by standing on her head.",
"type": "quotation"
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],
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"Of or relating to nimble or elegant dancing; of dancing, comprising agile footwork."
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"(obsolete) Of or relating to nimble or elegant dancing; of dancing, comprising agile footwork."
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"word": "trip the light fantastic"
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"word": "light fantastic"
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},
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},
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47,
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"ref": "1918 June 28, The Cairns Post, Qld, page 4, column 5:",
"text": "Weather permitting Ragtime Rastus will dance a light fantastic, and Jefferies will once more swap punches with Johnstone in a 20-round contest at 7.30 to-night.",
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},
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"text": "With well-known compere, Gordon White, at the helm, the evening soon was in full swing, as dancers stepped the light fantastic to the music of Arthur Ruggles' orchestra, and were kept moving all night.",
"type": "quotation"
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],
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"A dance or the act of dancing."
],
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"(dated) A dance or the act of dancing."
],
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"word": "light fantastic"
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"ref": "1911, ‘Steel Rudd’, The Book of Dan, Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, published 1970, page 87:",
"text": "He suddenly started off into a variety of light fantastic flights and jiggetty jiggetty jumps.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
54,
69
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],
"ref": "1934 November 13, The Daily Telegraph, Sydney, page 7, column 7:",
"text": "Unseen she skipped into the Equity Court yesterday, a light fantastic figure, who brightened the dry legal proceedings by standing on her head.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Of or relating to nimble or elegant dancing; of dancing, comprising agile footwork."
],
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"nimble"
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],
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"(obsolete) Of or relating to nimble or elegant dancing; of dancing, comprising agile footwork."
],
"tags": [
"not-comparable",
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]
}
],
"word": "light fantastic"
}
Download raw JSONL data for light fantastic meaning in English (4.1kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-08-28 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-08-05 using wiktextract (872fc7b and 4deed51). 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.