lark

Etymology 1

From Middle English larke, laverke, from Old English lāwerce, lǣwerce, lāuricæ, from Proto-Germanic *laiwarikǭ, *laiwazikǭ (compare dialectal West Frisian larts, Dutch leeuwerik, German Lerche), from *laiwaz (borrowed into Finnish leivo, Estonian lõo), of unknown ultimate origin with no definitive cognates outside of Germanic.

noun

1. Any of various small, singing passerine birds of the family Alaudidae.
2. Any of various similar-appearing birds, but usually ground-living, such as the meadowlark and titlark.
3. (by extension) One who wakes early; one who is up with the larks.

verb

1. To catch larks (type of bird).
   to go larking

Etymology 2

Uncertain, either * from a northern English dialectal term lake／laik (“to play”) (around 1300, from Old Norse leika (“to play (as opposed to work)”)), with an intrusive -r- as is common in southern British dialects; or * a shortening of skylark (1809), sailors' slang, "play roughly in the rigging of a ship", because the common European larks were proverbial for high-flying; Dutch has a similar idea in speelvogel (“playbird, a person of markedly playful nature”).

noun

1. A romp, frolic, some fun.
   Thanks partly to Tom Wolfe’s raised-eyebrow account, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” that bohemian lark has been retrospectively hailed as the flash point of the emerging hippie counterculture. 2011-08-04, Stephen Holden, “Stoned Archive: Wild Ride Of the Merry Pranksters”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
   What began as a lark has grown into something very, very big, inflating the company’s ambitions. 2018 November, Alexis C. Madrigal, “The Dangers of YouTube for Young Children”, in The Atlantic
2. A prank.

verb

1. To sport, engage in harmless pranking.
   […] the porter at the rail-road had seen a scuffle; or when he found it was likely to bring him in as a witness, then it might not have been a scuffle, only a little larking […] 1855, Elizabeth Gaskell, chapter 35, in North and South
2. To frolic, engage in carefree adventure.