Other forms: pointes
Pointe is dancing on the tips of the toes. On pointe, pointe shoes, go up on pointe.
The shoes have a hardened box at the toe and the dancer's own strength does the rest, which takes years to build — teachers will not let a pupil begin before the bones of the foot have hardened. It is spelled with an e and is French.
1nounpointeDancing on the tips of the toes.
“After years of ballet lessons, she was finally allowed to dance on pointe.”
pointe is a technique.
French pointe means a tip or point, from Latin punctum. Point is the same word without the e.
Proto-Indo-European
*pewǵ-
French
pointe — point, tip
English, today
pointe
From French pointe (“point, tip”). a doublet of point and ponto and puncto and punctum and punt and punto.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA