Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A Polish dance resembling the polka, usually in 3/4 or 3/8 time with the second beat heavily accented, and frequently adopted as a ballet form.
  • noun The music for this dance.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A lively Polish dance, properly for four or eight pairs of dancers, originally performed with a singing accompaniment.
  • noun Music for such a dance or in its rhythm, which is triple and moderately rapid, with a capricious accent on the second beat of the measure.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun music A Polish folk dance in triple time, usually moderately fast, containing a heavy accent on the third beat and occasionally the second beat.
  • noun music A classical musical composition inspired by the folk dance and conforming in some respects to its form, particularly as popularized by Chopin.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a Polish national dance in triple time
  • noun music composed for dancing the mazurka

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Russian, possibly from Polish (tańczyć) mazurka, (to dance) the mazurka, accusative of mazurek, dance of the Mazovians, from diminutive of Mazur, person from Mazovia, a historical region of eastern Poland.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Russian мазурку, from Polish mazurek "dance of the Mazur," an inhabitant of Mazowsze (compare Medieval Latin Mazovia), an ancient cultural region in east-central Poland.

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Examples

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  • He began to mazurka in swift caricature across the floor on sliding feet past the fireplace ...

    Joyce, Ulysses, 7

    January 2, 2007

  • The mazurka (Polish: mazurek, named after Poland's Mazury (Masuria) district; mazurka is the feminine form of mazurek) is a stylized Polish folk dance in triple meter with a lively tempo, containing a heavy accent on the third or second beat. Its folk originals are: slow kujawiak and fast oberek. It is always found to have either a triplet, trill, dotted eighth note pair, or ordinary eighth note pair before two quarter notes. The dance became popular at Ballroom dances in the rest of Europe during the nineteenth century. The Polish national anthem has a mazurka rhythm, but is too slow to be considered a mazurka.

    Several classical composers have written mazurkas, with the best known being the 57 composed by Frédéric Chopin for solo piano, the most famous of which is the Mazurka nr. 5. Henryk Wieniawski wrote two for violin with piano (the popular "Obertas", op. 19), and in the 1920s, Karol Szymanowski wrote a set of twenty for piano.

    _Wikipedia

    February 25, 2008

  • This dance was mentioned by Natasha in War And Peace.

    December 25, 2012

  • Sonny's Mazurka is a very popular Irish session tune.

    December 25, 2012