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Tap Dance – The Jenkins (lemmynsfw.com)

submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Source: https://thejenkinscomic.wordpress.com/2025/07/02/tap-dance/

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

There's the figure of speech "to tap-dance around (a topic)" meaning to make concerted effort avoid talking about a particular topic all the while talking about many things that are adjacent to that topic. It's usually to avoid coming across as offensive or ignorant in some way.

The underlying cause and/or whether a bit more knowledge on the part of the speaker could render the dance unnecessary is highly contextual (and mostly irrelevant here), but nevertheless, people tap-dance around topics all the time. (The previous sentence might even qualify as an instance.)

So, the question is: How much contribution to this n-gram is people pointing out that someone is, or was, tap-dancing around a topic?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I’ve heard people say “dancing around” a topic but I’ve never heard of anyone include the word tap in that

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

I have, and my experience is objective and universal, sorry ¯\_(ツ)_/¯