Waltz

How to spell waltz

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce waltz

What does waltz mean?

1. nounA ballroom dance in triple time performed by couples turning around the floor, or the music written for it.
2. verbTo dance a waltz, or to move somewhere in a confident, casual manner.

Waltz in a sentence

• noun

  The band closed the wedding with a slow waltz for the couple.

• verb

  He likes to waltz his partner across the polished floor.

• noun

  She practised the waltz for weeks before the formal ball.

• verb

  You cannot simply waltz into the meeting an hour late.

Where does waltz come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word came into English in the late eighteenth century from the German Walzer, the name of a turning ballroom dance that became fashionable across Europe in the 1780s and 1790s. Walzer was formed from the German verb walzen, which literally meant 'to roll', 'to turn' or 'to revolve', a fitting description of the smooth, rotating steps that gliding partners trace around a floor. That same root is distantly related to English words about turning and rolling, and the sense of effortless, spinning motion explains why 'waltz' later picked up the figurative meaning of moving somewhere with breezy, unbothered confidence. English kept the German spelling almost intact, which is why the word ends in the unusual 'tz' cluster rather than a simple 's' or 'z'; the 't' is easy to drop when writing from sound alone, since English ears barely separate it from the following 'z'.

How the word is built

• waltz (from German Walzer, the rolling dance)
• no affixes; the silent-feeling 't' before 'z' is the spelling trap