What is the Origin of the expression "Trip the night Fantastic"?

Question

Does anybody know? It doesnt make any sense to me. I hear it quite a lot but dont really know what context it should be used in.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Answer 1

Trip the light fantastic (phrase)
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To "trip the light fantastic" is to dance nimbly or lightly, or to move in a pattern to musical accompaniment.

The expression may also refer to setting in motion some operation, often complex, by means of a triggering device. For instance, "tripping the light fantastic" has been used in reference to the triggering of a green traffic signal by deliberately activating an in-pavement sensor approaching an intersection. Bicyclists in particular often find triggering the sensor requires skill and luck (the rider typically must track a narrow groove in the pavement over the sensor wire), and the expression, used by a bicyclist, seems to capture well both the delicacy of the operation and the euphoric sensation experienced when the signal is made to turn green before a stop is necessary.


[edit] History
This phrase evolved through an interesting series of usages and references. The phrase is typically attributed to Milton's poem L'Allegro, but a somewhat similar phrase appears in Shakespeare's The Tempest. The phrase in this modern usage comes from the lyrics of the song The Sidewalks of New York. The following chronological list outlines a few notable usages of this and similar sounding phrases.

The phrase 'tripping on his toe' appears in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, written in 1611:

Before you can say come, and goe,
And breathe twice; and cry, so, so:
Each one tripping on his Toe,
Will be here with mop, and mowe.
In this context, "mop, and mowe" means 'a grimace'.

In the poem L'Allegro by John Milton, published in 1645, a similar phrase appears, which seemingly refers to the dance-like gracefulness of the goddess Mirth:

Come, and trip it as ye go,
On the light fantastick toe.
And in thy right hand lead with thee,
The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty;
The term trip in this passage means to step lightly or nimbly. The adjectives light and fantastick (as Milton spelled it) refer to the movement of the feet (toe, or dance step).

William Makepeace Thackeray borrows this phrase in Men’s Wives (published in 1843), as an elegant and humorous reference to dancing:

Mrs. Crump sat in a little bar, profusely ornamented with pictures of the dancers of all ages, from Hillisberg, Rose, Parisot, who plied the light fantastic toe in 1805, down to the Sylphides of our day.
This expression became popular from the song "Sidewalks of New York" (melody and text by Charles B. Lawlor and James W. Blake) in 1894.

Boys and girls together, me and Mamie O'Rourke
Tripped the light fantastic
on the sidewalks of New York
A variation appeared in the poem "Jim Brown" by Edgar Lee Masters, part of his Spoon River Anthology. It appears in a list of activities that divides men into camps for and against. In the poem it is not tripping, but skipping the light fantastic.


[edit] Modern usages
The phrase 'trip the light fantastic' has been used in several modern contexts. One of the more interesting evolutions of the phrase is in the 1960s ballad A Whiter Shade of Pale, by the rock group Procol Harum.

We skipped the light fandango,
Turned cartwheels 'cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick
But the crowd called out for more
The phrase 'skipped the light fandango' also refers to dancing; the Fandango is a lively Spanish dance accompanied by castanets.

In a similar manner, Ben Folds Five alluded to the phrase in their song Underground, on their eponymous album:

We'll be dressed in all black
Slamming the pit fantastic
Officer Friendly's little boy's got a mohawk
And he knows just where we're coming from
The phrase is used in the second line of a 1927 song by Billy Murray and Aileen Stanley - 'I'm Gonna Dance Wit da Guy Wot Brung Me' - a delightfull comical duet between two New York types using one slang phrase after another in a vaudeville-like routine. The manner in which the phrase is used, suggests that 'tripping the light fantasic' was a not unusual bit of Roaring 20's slang.

The phrase was also used by the character Zaphod Beeblebrox in the film The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

It also appears in the song "Walking in the rain" by Grace Jones, in the "Island Life" album.

Another appearance is in the 1997 film "L.A. Confidential" when the character of Sid Hudgens (played by Danny DeVito) refers to two young pot-smokers as "tripping the light fantastic." In this instance the phrase is used ironically and plays off the contemporary slang usage of "trip" referring to taking drugs, specifically hallucinogenics. This updated meaning of the phrase is made possible by the earlier truncating of "toe" off the end, so that "trip the light fantastic toe" becomes simply "trip the light fantastic," where "light" and "fantastic" cease to modify "toe," and now "fantastic" simply modifies "light." The new meaning that now arises from the phrase is to take a mental journey on hallucinogenic drugs.

The Dream Theater epic A Change of Seasons (1995) mixes this same drug-taking context with the traditional dancing reference:

Tripping through the Light Fantastic
Lose a step and never get up
A similar usage is employed in Terry Pratchett's second Discworld novel, The Light Fantastic, which describes the opposite of light, but not darkness—rather something that is as far from darkness as normal light, but in the opposite direction.

Cambridge historian Simon Schaffer's BBC series Light Fantastic uses the theme of light to explore the development of science.

The phrase also appears in 1979 BBC television mini-series adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: "Tripping the light fantastic through the whitehall corridors"

It occurs in David Crowder and Mike Hogan's book Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven But Nobody Wants to Die (page 72): "Science and the soul have been tripping the light fantastic together for some time now."

UK pop singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor named her third album "Trip The Light Fantastic" in a probable reference to the original meaning, as she moves rather lightly when performing. She's said it essentially means "to dance"

In Dean Koontz's Life Expectancy (2004, p. 320), the protagonist references his newly acquired dancing ability: "Consequently, I learned to trip the light fantastic better than I had imagined that I could, considering that I'm biggish for my size and something of a gimp."

The role-playing game Bureau 13: Stalking the Night Fantastic draws its name from the phrase.

The band 311 (band) makes reference to this phrase in the lyrics from their song "Loco": "We trip the 'shrooms fantastic."

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trip_the_light_fantastic_%28phrase%29"

Answer 2

Trip The Light Fantastic Lyrics

Answer 3

It's 'trip the light fantastic'.

There are a couple of theories on where the phrase comes from. This is one of them...

"Come, and trip it as ye go,
On the light fantastic toe."

From a poem L'Allegro by John Milton, published in 1645.

In earlier literature the expression was 'trip the light fantastic toe' which was to dance elegantly or be very light footed and graceful. Later on the phrase was shortened and the 'toe' was left out as it was assumed it meant footwork anyway in later times.

Answer 4

the correct answer to your question is:

"yahoo! answers 2007 when Andrew T2 misquoted a popular phrase 'tripping the light fantastic' to introduce the as yet not widely used phrase 'tripping the NIGHT fantastic' - the meaning of which is as yet undefined. Yahoo! answer readers are waiting 'with baited breath' for Andrew T2 to explain what this new term means."

this is the correct answer. everyone else who has attpempted an answer have ignored your question, decided on a new question (origin of tripping the light fantastic) and spent all their brain cells etc answering this.

and there you go.

i thank you!

Answer 5

Trip the light fantastic = To dance, especially in an imaginative or 'fantastic' manner.
This apparently obscure expression originates from the works of John Milton. In the masque Comus, 1637, he used the lines:

Come, knit hands, and beat the ground,
In a light fantastic round.

By 'trip', Milton didn't mean 'catch one's feet and stumble'. The word had long been used to mean 'dance nimbly'. Chaucer used it that way as early as 1386, in The Miller's Tale:

In twenty manere koude he trippe and daunce. (In twenty ways could he trip and dance.)

Clearly, Milton was referring to dancing. He must have liked the imagery, as he used it again in the poem L'Allegro, 1645:

Sport that wrinkled Care derives,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it as you go
On the light fantastic toe.

The 'light fantastic toe' was the form that was used when the phrase first circulated, as in this extract from The Times, November 1803:

"A splendid ball was also given; where the CONSUL himself tripped it on the light fantastic toe."

Answer 6

It should be "trip the light fantastic", and it's in the lyrics of a song by Irving Berlin called "The Sidewalks of New York."

Answer 7

Lyrics: James W. Blake and Charles E. Lawlor
Music: James W. Blake and Charles E. Lawlor
The song was originally written in the 1890's, and was used as a Presidential campaign theme in the 1920's. Here are two versions of the lyrics. The first is as performed by Mel Torme. The second from the Digital Traditions lyrics database.

Torme version -- easy to sing with the music.
East Side, West Side, all around the town
The kids sang "ring around rosie", "London Bridge is falling down"
Boys and girls together, me and Mamie O'Rourke
We tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York

East Side, West Side, all around the town
Sweet Mamie grew up and bough herself a sweet little Alice-blue gown
All the fellas dug her, you should have heard them squark
When I escorted Mamie round the sidewalks of New York

East Side, West Side, riding through the parks
We started swinging at Jilly's then we split to P.J.Clark's
On to Chuck's Composite, then a drink at The Stork
We won't get home until morning 'cause we're going to take a walk
On the sidewalks of New York

Digital Traditions Version --

Down in front of Casey's old brown wooden stoop
On a summer's evening we formed a merry group
Boys and girls together we would sing and waltz
While Tony played the organ on the sidewalks of New York

East Side, West Side, all around the town
The tots sang "ring-around-rosie," "London Bridge is falling down"
Boys and girls together, me and Mamie O'Rourke
Tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York

That's where Johnny Casey, little Jimmy Crowe
Jakey Krause, the baker, who always had the dough
Pretty Nellie Shannon with a dude as light as cork
She first picked up the waltz step on the sidewalks of New York

Things have changed since those times, some are up in "G"
Others they are wand'rers but they all feel just like me
They'd part with all they've got, could they once more walk
With their best girl and have a twirl on the sidewalks of New York

Answer 8

It's something to do with dancing isn't it. Not sure

Should it be 'Trip the light fantastic'

Answer 9

The phrase is "trip the light fantastic."

trip the light fantastic is an extravagant way of referring to dancing, a phrase rather more common years ago than it is now.

Just for once, it is possible to point the finger at the author of a saying. The phrase is from the mind and pen of John Milton and appeared in his lyric poem L’Allegro, published in 1645. The Italian title can be translated as “the cheerful man”, and the poem is directed to the goddess Mirth:

Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest, and youthful Jollity,
Quips and cranks and wanton wiles,
Nods and becks and wreathed smiles
Such as hang on Hebe’s cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it, as you go,
On the light fantastic toe;
And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty;
And, if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free ...

We’ve lost the sense now, because to trip here doesn’t mean to catch one’s foot and stumble or fall, but rather to move lightly and nimbly, to dance. This was what the word meant when it appeared in the language in the fourteenth century. And fantastic (or fantastick, as Milton originally spelled it) has here a sense of something marked by extravagant fancy, perhaps capricious or impulsive.

Milton’s lines were borrowed as an elevated or humorous way to refer to dancing, first as the phrase trip the light fantastic toe. William Makepeace Thackeray included it in one of his lesser-known works, Men’s Wives of 1843: “Mrs. Crump sat in a little bar, profusely ornamented with pictures of the dancers of all ages, from Hillisberg, Rose, Parisot, who plied the light fantastic toe in 1805, down to the Sylphides of our day”. Later it was used in a truncated form without the final word. Losing that — as well as the ancient meaning of the first word and the original sense of fantastic — makes the whole saying more than a little obscure to us moderns.

That it has survived so long, at least in the United States, is probably due to a song of 1894, words by Charles B Lawler, which appeared in a musical comedy called The Sidewalks of New York (a title that was presumably borrowed for that of the recent film starring Ed Burns, as well as two previous ones). The relevant bit goes:

Boys and Girls together,
Me and Mamie O'Rourke,
Tripped the light fantastic,
On the sidewalks of New York.
Just to reinforce how mysterious the phrase now is to some people, one online site renders the relevant line as “We dance life’s fantastics”.

Answer 10

It is "trip the light fantastic".

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/trip-the-light-fantastic.html

Answer 11

Good night is never used as a greeting. Its used when we usually say goodbye and its night. For example: I'm at my friends house at night and when i go I say goodnight.