trip the light fantastic

To dance. Taken from the John Milton poem L'Allegro: "Come and trip it as ye go / On the light fantastic toe." Of course, the best part of a wedding is when everyone trips the light fantastic into the wee hours of the morning.

Jocular to dance. Shall we go trip the light fantastic?

Dance, as in Let's go out tonight and trip the light fantastic. This expression was originated by John Milton in L'Allegro (1632): "Come and trip it as ye go, On the light fantastick toe." The idiom uses trip in the sense of "a light, tripping step," and although fantastick was never the name of any particular dance, it survived and was given revived currency in James W. Blake's immensely popular song, The Sidewalks of New York (1894).

To dance.

To dance. This locution was coined by John Milton, who wrote, “Come, and trip it as ye go, On the light fantastick toe” (“L’Allegro,” 1632). For some reason it caught on (although fantastick was not then, and never became, the name of a particular dance). James W. Blake used it in the lyrics to a very popular Gay Nineties song, “The Sidewalks of New York” (1894): “We tripped the light fantastic—On the sidewalks of New York.”

Dance. The phrase comes from John Milton's poem “L'Allegro”: “Come and trip it as ye go / On the light fantastic toe.” “Trip” did not mean to stub your toe and fall. On the contrary it meant “to move lightly and nimbly.”