Definition of "cotillion"

Mrs. Hughes now joined them, and asked Miss Tilney if she was ready to go. "I hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing you again soon," said Catherine. "Shall you be at the cotillion ball tomorrow?"

1803 (date written), [Jane Austen], chapter X, in Northanger Abbey; published in Northanger Abbey: And Persuasion. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: John Murray, […], 20 December 1817 (indicated as 1818)

The second figure [of the dance] commenced, and I made a sad bungle; so I did of the third, and fourth, and fifth, for I never had danced a cotillon.

1833, [Frederick Marryat], chapter XII, in Peter Simple. […], volume II, London: Saunders and Otley, […], published 1834, page 200

"Well," I answered, at first with uncertainty, then with inspiration, "he would do splendidly to lead your cotillon, if you think of having one." / "So you do not dance, Mr. Crocker?" / I was somewhat set back by her perspicuity.

1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., page 51

At a desk outside the [Bernsteins’] door … I said, ‘Tom Wolfe,’ and sure enough, there he was, Tom Wolfe, listed on a yellow legal pad … Like any boy who has been instructed at cotillion to pay his respects to the host and hostess first … I sought out Leonard and Felicia Bernstein and introduced myself.

2018 May 29, Christopher Bonanos, “The Making of Tom Wolfe’s ‘Radical Chic’”, in Vulture‎