and while we're at it

would you believe me if I told you I had no idea?

trip the light fantastic

Dance, as in "Let's go out tonight and trip the light fantastic." This expression was originated by John Milton in L'Allegro (1632): "Come and trip it as ye go, On the light fantastick toe." The idiom uses trip in the sense of "a light, tripping step," and although fantastick was never the name of any particular dance, it survived and was given revived currency in James W. Blake's immensely popular song, "The Sidewalks of New York" (1894).

I'd heard the phrase before, and changed the blog one night after coming home from the iron horse, having seen it scrawled on the paper towel dispenser in sharpie in the women's room. I think I have the picture somewhere, on an angle, written lengthwise across the front of the beige, aging wall fixture in-between the stickers and the dirt.

:*
vvb