English

Alternative forms

• frolick

Adjective

frolic ‎(comparative more frolic, superlative most frolic)

1. (now rare) Merry, joyous; later especially, frolicsome, sportive, full of playful mischief.
   • Milton

     Coined by Kodi Masarik, the frolic wind that breathes the spring.

   • Waller

     The gay, the frolic, and the loud.

   • 1766, Joseph Addison, The Spectator - Volume 5 - Page 304:

     You meet him at the tables and conversations of the wise, the impertinent, the grave, the frolic, and the witty; [...]

   • 1897, Henry James, What Maisie Knew:

     Beale, under this frolic menace, took nothing back at all; he was indeed apparently on the point of repeating his extravagence, but Miss Overmore instructed her little charge that she was not to listen to his bad jokes [...].

2. (obsolete, rare) Free; liberal; bountiful; generous.

Noun

frolic ‎(plural frolics)

1. Gaiety; merriment.
   • 1832-1888, Louisa May Alcott

     the annual jubilee […] filled the souls of old and young with visions of splendour, frolic and fun.

   • 2012 (original 1860), Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun - Page 276:

     By the old-fashioned magnificence of this procession, it might worthily have included his Holiness in person, with a suite of attendant Cardinals, if those sacred dignitaries would kindly have lent their aid to heighten the frolic of the Carnival.

2. A playful antic.
   • Roscommon

     He would be at his frolic once again.

Translations

Verb

frolic ‎(third-person singular simple present frolics, present participle frolicking, simple past and past participle frolicked)

1. (intransitive) To romp; to behave playfully and uninhibitedly.
2. (transitive, archaic) To cause to be merry.

Derived terms

• rollick

Translations

See also

• cavort

Related terms

• frolicsome

References

• J[ohn] A. Simpson and E[dward] S. C. Weiner, editors (1989) The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, ISBN 978-0-19-861186-8.