The Big Dance

[Fred Shapiro]

On Wed, 13 Oct 1999, Anna M Fellegy wrote:

> I'm entering this brief discussion late in the game but, for what it's
> worth, the NCAA's Final Four basketball tournament is also called "the Big
> Dance"--the last three turns on the floor of March Madness.

The earliest occurrence of _big dance_ that I find on Nexis is a 1981 UPI
story referring to the NCAA tournament.  But, because of the way I
constructed my search, I might have missed earlier usage in other
contexts.


Fred R. Shapiro                             Coeditor (with Jane Garry)
Associate Librarian for Public Services     TRIAL AND ERROR: AN OXFORD
  and Lecturer in Legal Research            ANTHOLOGY OF LEGAL STORIES
Yale Law School                             Oxford University Press, 1998
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               ISBN 0-19-509547-2