Other forms: tutus
A tutu is the short stiff skirt a classical dancer wears. A pink tutu, a romantic tutu, wear a tutu.
There are two kinds: the long soft romantic one of the older ballets and the short flat pancake tutu that shows the legs, which arrived when technique wanted them seen. A stiff one takes many layers of net and is expensive to make.
1nountutuThe short stiff skirt a classical dancer wears.
“The little girl wore a pink tutu to her very first ballet class.”
tutu is a garment.
French tutu is a playful child's alteration of cucu, from cul, the backside — a joke about what the skirt covers.
French
tutu
English, today
tutu
Built from
Borrowed from French tutu, from cucu (“bum, bottom”), playful reduplication of cul (“arse”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA