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Highland fling. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
Highland fling, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
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English
Noun
Highland fling (plural Highland flings)
- A solo dance of the Scottish Highlands.
1815 February 24, [Walter Scott], chapter 3, in Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer. , volume II, Edinburgh: James Ballantyne and Co. for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, ; and Archibald Constable and Co., , →OCLC:When Dandy Dinmont, after executing two or three caprioles, and cutting the Highland-fling, by way of ridicule of his wife's anxiety, at last deigned to sit down, and commit his round, black, shaggy bullet of a head to her inspection.
1907, Barbara Baynton, edited by Sally Krimmer and Alan Lawson, Human Toll (Portable Australian Authors: Barbara Baynton), St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, published 1980, page 185:She had never danced a step in her life, but that experienced girl capering with circus grace in the Highland fling would, she knew, be as nothing to her given such inspiriting music.
1918, Norman Lindsay, The Magic Pudding, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 156:The artichokes bounded up and down
On top of the pumpkins' heads,
And the cabbage was dancing the highland fling
All over the onion beds.
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