choreomania

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English[edit]

Peter Breughel’s 1564 drawing of a dance epidemic occurring in Molenbeek that year.

Etymology[edit]

From choreo- +‎ -mania.

Noun[edit]

choreomania (uncountable)

  1. Synonym of tarantism (dance mania; dance epidemic)
    • 2018 July 10, Ned Pennant-Rea, “The Dancing Plague of 1518”, in Public Domain Review[1]:
      In full view of the public, this is the apogee of the choreomania that tormented Strasbourg for a midsummer month in 1518. Also known as the “dancing plague”, it was the most fatal and best documented of the more than ten such contagions which had broken out along the Rhine and Moselle rivers since 1374.