pirouette

Borrowed from French pirouette, see there for more; attested since 1706.^[1]

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˌpɪ.ɹʊˈɛt/, /ˌpɪ.ɹuːˈɛt/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˌpɪ.ɹəˈwɛt/, /ˌpɪ.ɹuːˈɛt/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛt

pirouette (plural pirouettes)

1. A whirling or turning on the toes in dancing, primarily in ballet.
   • 2023 October 14, HarryBlank, “Face Time”, in SCP Foundation‎^[1], archived from the original on 23 May 2024:

     "Serious as cognitohazard." Lillihammer danced down the corridor towards them, doing little pirouettes and leaping from toe to toe. "Reuben Wirth no longer exists. Gonna have to get Forsythe to do that brain scan to make sure I'm clean, but otherwise yeah. Poof."

2. The whirling about of a horse.
3. A wooden mouthpiece assembly or lip rest used in some European double-reed instruments.

pirouette (third-person singular simple present pirouettes, present participle pirouetting, simple past and past participle pirouetted)

1. (intransitive) To perform a pirouette; to whirl on the toes, like a dancer.
   • 1960, P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, chapter VIII:

     I came down like a sack of coals. The pulse was rapid, the blood pressure high, and for awhile the Blue Room pirouetted about me like an adagio dancer.

• Glossary of ballet on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Pirouette (dressage) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Borrowed from French pirouette, see there for more.

• IPA^(key): /ˌpi.ruˈɛ.tə/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: pi‧rou‧et‧te
• Rhymes: -ɛtə

pirouette f (plural pirouettes or pirouetten)

1. pirouette

• IPA^(key): /pi.ʁwɛt/

• Audio:

  (file)

From a Gallo-Roman root *pir- („peg, plug“, hence Italian piruolo (“peg top”)) and -ette (diminutive suffix). The word originally meant a “spinning top” (15th century).^[1]

pirouette f (plural pirouettes)

1. a whirling or turning on the toes in dancing
2. (sports, equestrians) a whirling volt movement made by a horse

• pirouetter

pirouette

1. inflection of pirouetter:
   1. first/third-person singular present indicative/subjunctive
   2. second-person singular imperative

• “pirouette”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
• Vocabulaire de la danse classique on the French Wikipedia.Wikipedia ^fr