Danced

Danced is the past tense and past participle of the verb dance. It denotes the act of moving the body to music or rhythm, often as an artistic, social, or ceremonial expression. In narrative and reportage, danced conveys completed action in the past.

As a regular verb, danced forms its simple past tense by adding -ed to the base form dance. The past participle is also danced, used with auxiliary verbs such as has danced or had danced. In pronunciation, it commonly sounds like /dænst/ in standard varieties.

Etymology traces danced to the Old French danser, from Latin saltare, to leap. The sense broadened from coordinated movement to any rhythmic, expressive body movement performed to music. Over time, cultural practices around dancing diversified into countless styles and forms, from court dances to folk traditions and modern kinetic forms.

Danced appears across literary and journalistic contexts to place actions in the past. It is typical in descriptions of performances, social gatherings, or rituals. It can also appear in idioms and fixed expressions such as scenes where observers or participants reacted to movement with emotion, capturing motion as a completed event.

See also: dance, dancing, choreography, choreograph.