ballets

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of ballet.

   The festival featured classical and modern ballets on alternating nights.

   Several of her ballets drew on folk traditions from her homeland.

   Note

   The plural belongs to the countable uses of ballet. Ballets can be individual works, dance companies, or the light fa-la-la part songs of Elizabethan and Italian Renaissance composers. Ballet as the art itself stays uncountable: you study ballet, not ballets. Heraldry, too, could count the small roundels on a coat of arms as ballets. The same spelling also serves the verb form, as in she ballets down the hall.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of ballet.

   The dancer ballets her way down the corridor every morning to warm up.

   Whenever the music starts, she ballets around the living room without a care.

   Note

   A verb made from the noun, describing movement reminiscent of ballet dancing. It works with or without an object: she ballets around the living room, or a player ballets his way past defenders. Context tells it apart from the noun. After a singular subject it is this verb (she ballets). After her, the or several it is the plural of the dance.

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