Meaning
A playful, slightly archaic way to say 'dance', especially lightly, nimbly or to music, as in 'we tripped the light fantastic until midnight'. It is a jocular or whimsical periphrasis for dancing, common in invitation ('shall we trip the light fantastic?') and journalism; it can sound dated or tongue-in-cheek in everyday speech. Whimsical and consciously old-fashioned in register, used mostly humorously or for festive effect. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The phrase condenses lines from John Milton's poem L'Allegro (composed around 1631, published 1645): 'Come, and trip it as ye go / On the light fantastic toe'. Milton used 'trip' in its long-established sense 'to dance nimbly' (Chaucer's Miller's Tale, 1386, has 'he koude trippe and daunce'); 'light fantastic' originally modified 'toe', a dancer's nimble footwork. Milton reused the image in his 1637 masque Comus ('in a light fantastic round'). Later writers clipped and recombined his wording into 'trip the light fantastic toe' - The Times used that form reporting a ball in November 1803 - before 'toe' fell away entirely. The condensed form without 'toe' was popularized by the 1894 American song 'The Sidewalks of New York' (Lawlor and Blake). No single coiner of the short form is recorded.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- Dance the light fantastic
- On the light fantastic toe
- Trip the light fantastic toe
- Tripping the light fantastic
Usage Examples
- The couple tripped the light fantastic at the ceilidh long after the band had promised to stop.
- On the first night of the cruise, the passengers queued up to trip the light fantastic under the mirrored ceiling.
- He claims two left feet, yet there he was tripping the light fantastic with the bride's grandmother.