gambol

Etymology

From earlier gambolde, from Middle French gambade (modern gambade).

verb

1. (intransitive) To move about playfully; to frolic.
   The lawn spread freely onward, as of old, over which, in sweet company, he had once gambolled. 1835: William Gilmore Simms, The Partisan: A Romance of the Revolution, chapter XI, page 134 (Harper)
   […] she remains near him to suckle him and teach him to choose the delicious grasses of the meadow, in which he gambols until he is grown. 1907, Paul Lafargue, The rights of the horse, page 160
   [The whales] quite enjoyed themselves gamboling freely among the waves in the sunshine. 1948, F. H. Lyon, chapter 5, in Kon-Tiki, translation of original by Thor Heyerdahl, page 143
   Three girls moved across the billiard-table lawn of a great manor house, circling and swarming about a common center of gravity like gamboling sparrows. 1995, Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age: or a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, page 286
   They were in the white wood / Gamboling out to picnic 2012, ミラクルミュージカル (lyrics and music), “Murders”, in Hawaii: Part II
2. (Britain, West Midlands) To do a forward roll.

noun

1. An instance of running or skipping about playfully.
   When his gambols were over, I looked at the paper, and, to speak the truth, found myself not a little puzzled at what my friend had depicted. 1843, Edgar Allan Poe, The Gold Bug, page 10
2. An instance of more general frisking or frolicking.
   The season of salad days has been rightly called a season of folly—rightly, because nature wisely intended salad days for folly, and we are wise to regard them as a time for folly. But are we wise when, halting upon the crutches age finds convenient after the gambols of youth have lost their attractions, we condemn this season of harmless folly to perpetual reprobation? 1874 October, “Salad Days”, in The American Educational Monthly, page 462