Dance on someone’s grave

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Grammarist

Dance on someone’s grave is an idiom of uncertain origin. We will examine the meaning of the idiom dance on someone’s grave, where it came from, and some examples of its use in sentences.

To dance on someone’s grave means to rejoice in that person’s death, to be happy that person has passed on. Sometimes, a person may tell someone that he will dance on that person’s grave, meaning that he will outlive that person and celebrate when that person dies. The idiom dance on someone’s grave is also used to mean to rejoice in someone’s misfortune or in his downfall. The sentiment behind the idiom is that the speaker will triumph. The origin of dance on someone’s grave is uncertain and may be a translation of an idiom from another language. The phrase has been in use in English since at least the late 1800s. Related phrases are dances on someone’s grave, danced on someone’s grave, dancing on someone’s grave.

Examples

Replied the ever sober Jonathan Willis of The Athletic: “I don’t think I’d dance on his grave, but we’re talking more than a year now of sustained sub-.900 SV% play. ” (The Edmonton Journal)

On various platforms, such comments were common and congregants of Magaya’s Prophetic Healing and Deliverance (PHD) Ministries on social media would perhaps have been taken aback by the attack on their spiritual father by keyboard warriors who seemed to have been waiting for an opportunity to dance on his grave. (The Zimbabwe Mail)

The sister of a young man murdered by the IRA more than 30 years ago has accused dissident republicans of dancing on his grave. (The Belfast Telegraph)