English

Noun

sportfulness ‎(uncountable)

1. playfulness
   • 1894, Rev. John Gerardus Fagg, Forty Years in South China:

     In long winter nights it was hard to tell who enjoyed sportfulness the better, the children who romped the floor, or the parents who, with lighted countenance, looked at them.

   • 1917, Arthur Symons, Figures of Several Centuries:

     'Sometimes,' he writes, in a characteristic letter, 'when I find myself transported with jollity and love of company, I hang lead to my heels, and reduce to my thoughts my fortunes, my years, the duties of a man, of a friend, of a husband, of a father, and all the incumbencies of a family; when sadness dejects me, either I countermine it with another sadness, or I kindle squibs about me again, and fly into sportfulness and company.'