DCHP-1 Online

dance hall

• 1 †  a building used for public dancing.

  • In frontier times, usually a place of entertainment where gambling, drinking, and more fleshly pleasures were available.

  • 1898  In relation to the dance halls, they would be classed as one of the conditions in vogue in mining camp life, and will not be molested, provided that there is no indecent exposure of person by the girl occupants, and strict order maintained without noise or vulgarity.
  • 1921  Instead of lurching into the dance hall and blazing away at the ceiling, picture the "old-timer," the hardened miner of a hundred camps, planking down his pistols on the counter of the pawnshop and asking "How much?"
  • 1958  The proposed change would put premises used for teen dances, "controlled by a responsible organization that has been approved by city commissioners," outside the classification of "dance hall."

• 2 among Indians and Eskimos, a large structure where communal dancing is performed.

  See also: dance house  

  • 1936  . . . behind the pow-wow house, or dance-hall, was a long birch-bark structure, surmounted with a white cross and a white flag.

• 3 an area where prairie chicken perform mating dances.

  See also: dancing ground  

  • 1959  The prairie chicken have four "dance halls" on Moore's place. He has approached within 30 yards to watch the annual rites.