Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Frolicsome; playful.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Sportive; playful; frolicsome.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Gay; sportive; playful; frolicsome; merry.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Full of sport; playful

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

game +‎ -some

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Examples

  • Here renewed delights expanded, for the "poor pig" became lively and almost "gamesome," being greatly astonished by the light and men and the repast at this hour of the night.

    The Ordeal A Mountain Romance of Tennessee Mary Noailles Murfree 1886

  • King, powerful in all the craft of Troubadours and Jongleurs, is held in peculiar esteem for conducting mysteries, and other of those gamesome and delightful sports and processions with which our holy Church permits her graver ceremonies to be relieved and diversified, to the cheering of the hearts of all true children of religion.

    Anne of Geierstein 2008

  • Then lie that loves her gamesome vein, and tempers toys with art,

    Anatomy of Melancholy 2007

  • Who then was gleeful but the knight, and strange it was to see all his sorrow run off him; and he became glad and gamesome as a youth, and yet withal exceeding courteous and kind with her, as though he were serving a mighty queen.

    The Water of the Wondrous Isles 2007

  • The dense writer has yet ample room and choice of phrase, and even a gamesome mood often between his valid words.

    Uncollected Prose 2006

  • As if gamesome winds and gamesome youths were not sufficient, it was the habit to sling these feeble luminaries from house to house above the fairway.

    Virginibus Puerisque and other papers 2005

  • Evelyn, a laughing cherub, a gamesome infant, without idea of pain or sorrow, would, shaking back his light curls from his eyes, make the halls re-echo with his merriment, and in a thousand artless ways attract our attention to his play.

    The Last Man 2003

  • Again and again to such gamesome talk, the dexterous dart is repeated, the spear returning to its master like a greyhound held in skilful leash.

    Moby Dick; or the Whale 2002

  • “Gam,” a thing so utterly unknown to all other ships that they never heard of the name even; and if by chance they should hear of it, they only grin at it, and repeat gamesome stuff about “spouters” and “blubber-boilers,” and such like pretty exclamations.

    Moby Dick; or the Whale 2002

  • He is the most gamesome and light-hearted of all the whales, making more gay foam and white water generally than any other of them.

    Moby Dick; or the Whale 2002

Comments

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  • Brutus:

    I am not gamesome: I do lack some part

    Of that quick spirit that is in Antony.

    – Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act I, scene ii.

    June 8, 2015