Trip the light fantastic (phrase)

To "trip the light fantastic" is to dance nimbly or lightly, or to move in a pattern to musical accompaniment. It is often used in a humorous vein. As early as 1908 it was viewed as a cliché or hackneyed phrase. Grammatically, it is an example of a constructionally idiosyncratic idiom, in that it is impossible to construct a meaningful literal-scene from the formal structure. As such it should be viewed as a catena.