Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To leap about playfully; frolic.
- n. A playful skipping or frolicking about.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A skipping, leaping, or frisking about; a spring, leap, skip, or jump, as in frolic or sport.
- To skip about in sport; caper in frolic, like children or lambs; frisk carelessly or heedlessly.
- Synonyms To frolic, romp, caper.
Wiktionary
- v. intransitive To move about playfully; to frolic.
- v. UK, regional to do a forward roll
- n. An instance of running or skipping about playfully.
- n. An instance of more general frisking or frolicking.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A skipping or leaping about in frolic; a hop; a sportive prank.
- v. To dance and skip about in sport; to frisk; to skip; to play in frolic, like boys or lambs.
WordNet 3.0
- n. gay or light-hearted recreational activity for diversion or amusement
- v. play boisterously
Etymologies
- Alteration of French gambade, horse's jump, from Old French, perhaps from Old Italian gambata, from gamba, leg, from Late Latin, hoof, perhaps from Greek kampē, bend. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“His inexhaustible gift of lightning repartee I saw illustrated on another occasion, when he presided at the midnight "gambol" of a Bohemian club, at which it needed the utmost tact and presence of mind to "ride the whirlwind and direct the storm.”
“May you frolic and cavort and gambol and caper in a madcap series of wacky zany antics that are fondly remembered always.”
“It's supposedly, theoretically, marvelous to gambol about in a "something-for-everyone" culture where all tastes are catered to by one medium or many.”
The Washington Post: In the 500-channel universe, we're definitely lost in space
“Rows of brick garden apartments all backed onto a massive common garden: a shared backyard for children to play, dogs to gambol, and families to eat picnics together.”
“The final day was a 20-mile gambol through a southern spur of the Brooks Range, the Blue Cloud Mountains.”
The Huffington Post: Richard Bangs: So, You Think That's Cold?
“Elsewhere there is pealing for peeling ; bite for bight ; straights for straits ; gamble for gambol ; canon for cannon .”
“An outraged parent must have complained about our gambol through Times Square, because the next year we were bused to the Upper West Side of Manhattan and taken to the Museum of Natural History.”
“And nobody can resist the EcoSpheres, fully contained self-sustaining ecosystems in which tiny shrimp gambol among seaweed in a dome the size of a paperweight.”
“Unfortunately, everything ended up heading into the Nexus Of Suck where the Ben Nelsons and Susan Collinses of the world gambol and play in plushie costumes, limiting the effectiveness of bills.”
“I love that natural feel and flow where you can gambol over space and time.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘gambol’.
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GRE 2014
abase, abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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important
shamanism, consol, sanguine, iffy, affinity, concatenation, honed, innumberable, aiden, inexorable, vet, suss and 176 more...
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GRE Barron's 800
zealot, wistful, welter, wary, whimsical, warranted, vortex, vivisection, volatile, vitiate, viscous, visage and 787 more...
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movement (slow)
words describing slow action or movement
( open list, randomness, descriptive )
related:
http://www.wordnik.co...creep, crawl, plod, slouch, idle, lumber, tiptoe, bend, amble, mosey, saunter, loiter and 117 more...
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Newly discovered
gambol, zabaglione, archness, gormless, chanteuse, plangent, churl, tonsure, métier, chordate, miscegenation, inchoate
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I am : moving
Words to describe gait and movement.
walk, run, trot, jog, canter, gallop, skip, crawl, slink, slither, amble, trundle and 69 more...
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Arcades Ambo
arcades ambo, bamboo, ambo, amboyna, bambino, Amboise, framboise, dithurambos, Rambo, flamboyant, gamboge, mambo and 33 more...
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Kathy C's List
My favorite words
golconda, au fait, purlicue, tautonym, cunctatory, gynecomastia, vesta, imprimatur, efflux, antediluvian, protean, phlegmatic and 24 more...
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♥
ambrosia, inamorata, gossamer, lily-white, hummingbird, roucoulement, poppy, daisy, calypso, lunula, lamb, dove and 1526 more...
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Words That Mean Things
I found most of these words in books! That means they MUST be good.
flinders, periplus, palaver, midden, cadge, legerdemain, flense, lapidary, geas, bailey, susurration, satoris and 128 more...
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Words from Moby Dick
frigate, presumptuous, genteel, succor, hearthstone, gentry, factitious, bilious, insurgent, portent, enervate, genuflect and 303 more...
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To Learn
enervate, redolent, distaff, approbation, arrogate, bonhomie, palliate, calumny, panoply, contumacious, edify, dyspeptic and 188 more...
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collection
sanguine, vie, antebellum, glacial, treacly, iconoclast, lissom, anathema, serendipity, parsimonious, histrionic, contemptuous and 279 more...
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Airborn
Words and phrases from Kenneth Oppel's book, Airborn.
running lights, starboard, bow, gondola, bullhorn, rudder man, gas cell, keel, catwalk, stern, cargo bay, machinist and 152 more...
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ADW2
nudnik, temper, intercalate, cleave, scowl, chapfallen, malapropos, disport, annals, paean, paradisiacal, whet and 362 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for gambol.
Prolagus Ha! Jul 17, 2008
darqueau indeed Jul 7, 2008
reesetee A word fraught with potentially hilarious misunderstandings. ;-) Feb 20, 2007
brtom "And Gerty, wrapt in thought, scarce saw or heard her companions or the twins at their boyish gambols ..."
Joyce, Ulysses, 13
Jan 14, 2007