Other forms: ballets
Ballet is the classical dance form performed with precise positions and, for women, on the tips of the toes. Study ballet, a ballet dancer, go to the ballet.
The word is French and keeps its French sound in British English — BAL-ay, stress at the front — while American English stresses the second syllable. It is uncountable for the art form and countable for a particular work: Swan Lake is a ballet. Almost all the vocabulary is French and untranslated — plié, arabesque, pas de deux — and the shoes are pointe shoes, which is where on point comes from.
1nounballetA classical form of dance with set positions and movements.
“She did ballet from the age of four.”
2nounparticularA particular work performed in that form.
“The ballet runs for two hours with one interval.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
ballet is a form of dance.
Italian balletto is a little dance, from ballare, to dance — the same root as ball, meaning a dance, and ballad, which was originally a dancing song. Ballet arrived in France from the Italian courts and reached English with its French spelling intact.
Latin
ballō — to dance
Italian
balletto — short dance, ballet
French
ballet
English, today
ballet
Built from
French ballet, from Italian balletto (“short dance, ballet”), diminutive form of ballo (“group dance”) (cognate with bal, whence ball), from Latin ballō (“to dance”). by surface analysis, ball + -et.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA