Definition of "Barnaby"

Barnaby

noun
uncountable
1. (archaic) A lively and fast-paced dance; (by extension) any quick and uneven movement.
  Quotations
  Bounce cry the port-holes, out they flyAnd make the world dance Barnaby.
  1640-1687, Charles Cotton, in his burlesque of Virgil
  It was a regular Barnaby dance; I'd never seen anyone move so quickly. Before the culprit bolted out the door into the night,
  1985, Gregory Sass, Redcoat, page 28
  "Owell gave me this. Said to get it to you in a Barnaby dance. 'Ere it is." His tongue scraped across his lower lip as he stared at Charity.
  1996, Jo Ann Ferguson, Miss Charity's Case, page 182
  We were now doing a strange sort of Barnaby dance: shuffling to and fro as I blocked his attempts to set off in pursuit.
  2009, Julia Golding, The Diamond of Drury Lane, page 434
proper noun
1. A male given name from Hebrew, from the medieval vernacular form of Barnabas.
  Quotations
  This day the sun is in his chiefest heightWith Barnaby the Bright.
  1595, Edmund Spenser, Epithalamium
  The name Barnaby may strike the reader as out of place in so Celtic a pedigree; but this was an anglicisation of the true name, Brian Oge - - - Now, times are altered, and his anglicised descendants will probably begin to use Brian as a family name again, rejecting Barnaby as less respectable.
  1848, John O'Donovan, “The Annals of the Four Masters”, in The Dublin University Magazine, volume 31, page 577
  Barnaby liked his own name. He was proud of its differentness and would never answer to "Barney", or any other nickname.
  1962, Edward Eager, Seven-Day Magic, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, published 1999, page 8
  But instead of pressing the button that would have taped the play she pressed the button that activated the built-in microphone and recorded a hundred and twenty minutes of hers and Barnaby's home life, which aurally consisted of 'Want a cup of tea?' 'No thanks.'
  2000, Alexei Sayle, Barcelona Plates