song and dance
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
an elaborate story or excuse
Literally: music and choreographed movement
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
‘ Burra has not made a song and dance about how it has been affected,’ he said.
Surely people have better things to do than make a great song and dance about missing a dinner party.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed on Wikipedia “Irreversible binomial” (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-29). Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “song and dance” mean?
an elaborate story or excuse Literally: music and choreographed movement
Is “song and dance” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.
What is the closest equivalent?
“ca vũ” (Tiếng Việt) — near equivalent.