quadrille

Meanings

Noun

• A dance originating in the mid-1700s with four couples forming a square, rather much like the modern square dance.
• The music for this dance.
• A Spanish trick-taking card game from the 1700s played with a 40-card deck.
• A choreographed dressage ride, commonly performed to music, with a minimum of four horses.
• Quadrille ruled graph paper, quad paper.

Verb

• To dance the quadrille.

Origin

• French, in sense of “group of knights”, from Spanish cuadrilla, diminutive of cuadra (compare also cuadra), from Latin quadra.
• From French quadrillé.