ghost dance
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.30 in modern English
17
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
2
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
name
A 19th-century religious movement, incorporated into numerous Native American belief systems, according to which performing a dance would reunite the living with spirits of the dead and bring prosperity and unity to native peoples.
noun
Alternative letter-case form of ghost dance.
Example Sentences
- "It would be difficult to designate the Ghost Dance of the Indians of North America, for instance, as anything but a phenomenon of acculturation; […]."
- "In the fall of 1890, a new religious fever, “Ghost Dancing,” spread among the Indian tribes pushed to the far edge of the prairies by broken treaties and the advance of the white man. Their religion held that floods would come, destroying, the whites. And then, game would return; dead Indians would be resurrected, and living Indians would be protected from all harm by wearing painted ghost shirts and performing the special dance."
- "In life, many of the Army’s victims were the followers of the Ghost Dance, a nineteenth-century faith that originated with a vision, delivered, it was said, by God to the Paiute messiah Jack Wilson, more commonly known as Wovoka."
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Religion.