Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Frolicsome   Listen
adjective
Frolicsome  adj.  Full of gayety and mirth; given to pranks; sportive. "Old England, who takes a frolicsome brain fever once every two or three years, for the benefit of her doctors."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Frolicsome" Quotes from Famous Books



... represent masks enveloped in festoons of vine tendrils, loaded with clusters of grapes, mingled with other foliage, on which birds are swinging, children plucking grapes or treading them under foot, or blowing on flutes, or tumbling over each other in frolicsome glee. This superb urn, which is like nothing we have nowadays, is supposed to have been intended to hold the ashes of the dead. For it was a custom of ancient days to burn the bodies of the dead, and place the urns containing their ashes in ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... a story was applicable. Should any one come again to borrow a horse, he ought to say, "I much regret that I cannot comply with your request. The fact is, we lately turned him out to grass, and becoming frolicsome, he dislocated his thigh, and is now lying, covered with straw, in a corner of the stable." "Something like that," adds the rector, "something with an air of truth about it, is what you should say." A third parishioner comes to invite the rector and the curate to a feast at his house. ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston

... Something bounce in at the closet window, and skip about from one side to the other: whereat, although I was much alarmed, yet I ventured to look out, but not stirring from my seat; and then I saw this frolicsome animal frisking and leaping up and down, till at last he came to my box, which he seemed to view with great pleasure and curiosity, peeping in at the door and every window. I retreated to the further corner of my room or box; but the monkey, looking in at every side, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... wars, could not imagine such a thing as Christmas without their father, and had busied themselves for weeks in making everything ready to have a merry time with him. Kitty, who loved to play quite as much as any frolicsome Kitty of to-day, had spent all her spare time in knitting a pair of thick woollen stockings, which seems a wonderful feat for a little girl only eight years old to perform! Can you not see her sitting ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... I may as well stop, for my narrative is over, and I hear someone coming along the hail, doubtless after me. It is only Harold, so I may add a word or two more. I am writing now with difficulty, for some frolicsome individual has placed a hand over my eyes and says, "Guess." I can just see to write between the fingers. Again I am commanded, "Guess!" so I say carelessly, "Alice." Then, would you believe it, ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... such as the cowboy had, some one who loves him less will have to describe. Perhaps he was a bit too frolicsome in town, and too quick to settle a trifling dispute with weapons; but these things were inevitable results ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... Happy and frolicsome suggestion! The invitations circulated, and it was soon known that they were all to gather ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... letter, or some message which should say that she was not forgotten by Wilford Cameron, but as the weeks went by and it did not come, a shadow had fallen upon her spirits, and the family missed something from her ringing laugh and frolicsome ways, while she herself wondered why the household duties given to her should be so utterly distasteful. She used to enjoy them so much, but now she liked nothing except to go with Uncle Ephraim out into the fields where she could sit alone while he worked nearby, or to ride ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... and in the elderly, lame, one-eyed, sober-looking man, recognised the wild jovial Willy, who had tamed the most unruly fillies, taken the most frantic leaps, carolled forth the blithest song—madcap, good-fellow, frolicsome, childlike darling of gay and grave, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... forgets his theme; where the proposition of his argument is only found by incidence, stuffed and half stifled in foreign matter. Observe his footsteps in the Daemon of Socrates. O God! how beautiful are these frolicsome sallies, those variations and digressions, and all the more when they seem most fortuitous and careless. 'Tis the indiligent reader who loses my subject, and not I; there will always be found some word or ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... were much entertained by the lively, frolicsome manoeuvres of the numerous beautiful chameleons of rapidly changing colors, who greatly distracted the attention of the congregation from the service by their pranks on the ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... Jim got into a frolicsome mood and went through the crowded kitchen and into the dining room where the guests were assembled. At the moment the rather riotous laughter and story telling had ceased and everything was quiet. He was worried. "Things aren't going ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson

... physician, is masquerading in some extraordinary attire with a mask of extraordinary dimensions and significance. He sees in the throng a young lady of his acquaintance, and proceeds to shake hands with her with great effusion. So well is the secret kept, that she has no idea that the apparently frolicsome youth is a middle-aged man of business, and she spends perhaps half the night wondering which of her beaus this fearfully and wonderfully ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... being buffeted by winds from every quarter of the compass of sensation. And through it all, she struggled to drive words together into sentences, words, that like a flock of witless sheep upon open ground, would not be driven, but ran this way and jumped that in a frolicsome imbecility of purpose. ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... and Mrs. Johanna Southcote, at the same time; which of the two was the greatest imposter it would be very difficult to decide, although the former appears to have borne off the palm of successful fraud and imposition. Miss Hannah, who, in her younger days, had been a very frolicsome lass, became all at once converted into a saint, and set up for a severe and rigid moralist; and she had the merit of establishing the gang generally known by the title of the SAINTS, amongst our politicians. In her train she had the ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt

... the case. The frolicsome wolves had varied their amusement by springing upward among the lowermost branches. A brute would make a jump, and, landing upon the limb, sustain himself until one or two of his comrades imitated his performance, when they would all ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)

... burst into shouts of laughter, in which True joining with a loud bark, off scampered the monkeys, whisking their long tails, along the sipos and branches, till they were hid from sight, although we could still hear their chattering in the distance. I could not have had the heart to fire at such frolicsome creatures, even had we been more pressed for food than was ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... the reader during his country walks or rides has observed, on coming to four cross-roads, two or three handfuls of grass lying at a small distance from each other down one of these roads; perhaps he may have supposed that this grass was recently plucked from the roadside by frolicsome children, and flung upon the ground in sport, and this may possibly have been the case; it is ten chances to one, however, that no children's hands plucked them, but that they were strewed in this manner by Gypsies, for the purpose of informing any of their companions, who might ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... curly-headed fellow, with his shirt collar unbuttoned, was now and again running past him, now carrying a log on his shoulder, now an axe in his hands; he was skipping along, like a frolicsome goat, scattering about him cheerful, ringing laughter, jests, violent oaths, and working unceasingly, now assisting one, now another, as he was cleverly and quickly running across the deck, which was obstructed ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... over a train, dropped the first bomb on the engine, and the second, third, fourth, and fifth on the soldiers who scurried from the carriages. When a detachment of cavalry really did break through for once in a while, it was startled to find an aerial vanguard. A frolicsome biplane darted ahead, pointed out positions worthy of attack, and created a ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott

... directly under the point where the priest had paused, there was one of those fantastically carved stone gutters with which Gothic edifices bristle, and, in a crevice of that gutter, two pretty wallflowers in blossom, shaken out and vivified, as it were, by the breath of air, made frolicsome salutations to each other. Above the towers, on high, far away in the depths of the sky, the cries of little ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... proclaimed victor in more than one of those playfully frolicsome "Frolics of the Fancy," in which nobly born but ignobly-minded "Corinthians" formerly invested so much interest and money, had at length matched his powers against the gentleman who bore the title of "the champion of the ring"; but, after a protracted contest of two hours and a ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... monkey. "Now," said he, when his work was done, "of those who taste the juice of the grape, some will become meek and gentle as the lamb, some bold and fearless as the lion, some foul and beastly as the pig, and others frolicsome and lively as the monkey." This quaint story may be found more fully detailed in the Midrash Tanchuma (see Noah) and the Yalkut on Genesis. The Mohammedan legend is somewhat similar. It relates how Satan on the like occasion used the blood of a peacock, ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... Marshal Crow and the amiable Foxes discussed the "points" of the frolicsome puppies in the rear of ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon

... of the plains know that their new boss had been wanting to see them in their unrestrained moments? They acted like boys—more mischievous than boys in their most frolicsome moods. Their movements were grotesque, their gestures extravagant, their talk high-pitched and flavored with a dialect that Ruth had never heard. They were "showing off"; the girl knew that. But she also knew that in their actions was much of earnestness, that an ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer

... lived to be nine years old, and died at last, I have reason to think, of some hurt in his loins by a fall. Puss is still living, and has just completed his tenth year, discovering no signs of decay nor even of age, except that he is grown more discreet and less frolicsome than he was. I cannot conclude, sir, without informing you that I have lately introduced a dog to his acquaintance, a spaniel that had never seen a hare, to a hare that had never seen a spaniel. I did it with great caution, but there was ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... necks composed of threads fine as gossamer, blacker than jet and shining like spun glass-hair that looked as if no comb or brush could ever tame its beautiful wildness. And in spirit they were what they seemed: such a wild, joyous, frolicsome spirit with such grace and fleetness one does not look for in human beings, but only in birds or in some small bird-like volatile mammal—a squirrel or a marmoset of the tropical forest, or the chinchilla ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... appeared that she had been able to enjoy that variety which is so gratifying a feature of human experience. Notwithstanding the fact that she had never been on the back of a horse in her life, she unerringly selected the freshest and most frolicsome of the Irish ponies as her mount. It appears further that she was finally lifted to the saddle of this animal as the result of a distinct understanding between Mr. James George Jackson and her guide that the latter gentleman was not only ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... esplanade we have described, but never transgressing those precincts which his sagacity knew were protected by his master's pennon. After a few gambols of this kind, the dog, coming close up to his master, laid at once aside his frolicsome mood, relapsed into his usual gravity and slowness of gesture and deportment, and looked as if he were ashamed that anything should have moved him to depart so far out of his ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... object that called her attention, while writhing her uncouth features into a most diabolical grimace. She thundered out an oath which made Roque invoke Santa Maria; but he was not a little scandalized when he discovered that the occasion of the hag's indignation was her frolicsome husband, who, without the least regard to her presence, was carrying on, in the presence of his wife, a little ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... round. Strictly speaking, a round is a circular dance in which the performers hold each other by the hands. The term, however, is fairly applicable to the frolicsome gambols of a group of lambs in a spring meadow. Certain rounds became famous enough to be individualised, as e.g. Sellenger's or St. Leger's round, mentioned in the May-day song, 'Come Lasses and Lads.' Cp. Macbeth, iv. 1; Midsummer ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott

... been so seriously ill that the two girls' hearts were melted in grief, they would, I think, for they were in general frolicsome and saucy, have enjoyed a hearty laugh at the Doctor's extraordinary appearance, instead of retiring shyly, as they did, into the corner, greatly alarmed. It will indeed be worth while to describe the outward appearance ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... baths. I may say of that social phase in the Bain, that it was "dooll, varry dooll, but the mutton was good." I was a fool to go there; of course one cannot expect people with their livers and their spleens, and their entire internal tubular mechanism out of order, to be chirpy and frolicsome. There were a good many ladies there, pale, I could not quite make out whether from ill-health or from violet-powder; but I think the latter had something to do with their pallor, for, after drinking, when they wiped their lips, roses began to bloom, wherever the napkin ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... I could not help doing so ever since you told me that nobody could gain your love who was not fond of books. And yet, though I like it on that account more than I did, I don't read somehow so earnestly and understand so well as I used to do when my mind was all at ease, always frolicsome, and ever upon tiptoe, ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... "great world;" and because she had gained it all the old things of her lost past grew unalterably sweet to her now that they no longer could be called hers. The brown, kind, homely, tender face of grand'mere; the gambols of white and frolicsome Bebe; the woods where, with every spring, she had filled her arms with sheaves of delicate primroses; the quaint little room with its strings of melons and sweet herbs, its glittering brass and pewter, its wood-fire with the soup-pot simmering above the flame; the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... steps the progress of his labour; his labour is founded on the basis of nature, SELF-INTEREST: can it want a stronger allurement? Wives and children, who before in vain demanded of him a morsel of bread, now, fat and frolicsome, gladly help their father to clear those fields whence exuberant crops are to arise to feed and to clothe them all; without any part being claimed, either by a despotic prince, a rich abbot, or a mighty lord. Here religion demands but little ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... a buoyant temper; was inclined to see the amusing side of things; enjoyed frolicsome conversation; and in a general way was well fitted to bear up under worries, and recover quickly from depressed conditions. The gentlemen who boarded with me were a cheerful and intelligent set, whose conversation entertained me, ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... perhaps:—Our eyes Hold bias with our humour:—His, to paint With Nature's freshness, what before him lies: The knave, the fool; the frolicsome, the quaint: His the broad jest, the laugh without restraint, The ready tears, the spirit lightly moved; Loving the world, and by ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... to the irascible side of his nature was his tender love for his children, of which he had four, the last born in 1825. In them he took constant delight. In their games Babbo, as he was affectionately termed, was the most gleeful and frolicsome of them all. When he was separated from them he was in continual anxiety. On one of his trips he received the first childish letter from his son Arnold. In his reply the concluding lines reveal the ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... battled with his thoughts. About noon the sky began to clear; it grew brighter and brighter. Moni came out of his cave and looked around. The goats once more sprang gayly here and there, and the little kid was quite frolicsome from delight at the returning sun and ...
— Moni the Goat-Boy • Johanna Spyri et al

... entertainment a ludicrous version of the Chicago affair in two parts. The paper which was preserved by her young friend, illustrates also another trait which she thus describes at the close of a frolicsome letter to Miss E. A. Warner: "It is one of the peculiar peculiarities of this woman that she usually carries on, when she wants to hide her feelins." Part I. ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... was happy. He had invited all the officials to attend the nuptials by the Golden Gate. Venus was in the ascendant. The red planet of Mars had set, he hoped, forever. The officers and gentry contemplated a frolicsome ride around the Salinas bend, over the beautiful passes to Santa Clara valley and the ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... upon their mirth in a faint and slightly disagreeable bewilderment. 'Bread,' which sounds a commonplace, plain-sailing monosyllable in England, was the word that most delighted these good ladies of Monastier; it seemed to them frolicsome and racy, like a page of Pickwick; and they all got it carefully by heart, as a stand-by, I presume, for winter evenings. I have tried it since then with every sort of accent and inflection, but I seem to lack the ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... you have one?" Bertram demanded one day. "Really, Will, I'm beginning to think she's a myth. Long years ago, from the first of April till June we did have two frolicsome sprites here that announced themselves as 'Billy' and 'Spunk,' I'll own. And a year later, by ways devious and secret, we three managed to see the one called 'Billy' off on a great steamship. Since then, what? A word—a message—a ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter

... stretched on the floor, surrounded by the ruins of the table and the fragments of glass, both bleeding and bruised, the landlord made his appearance; and after removing the astonished quadruped to more congenial quarters, the frolicsome and sportive ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro

... the red raiment of the tree, and tear from it shreds until all the grass is ruddy with refuse, and their snowy breasts stained as though their feast was of blood instead of colourless nectar. For many days here is a scene of a perpetual banquet—a noisy, cheerful, frolicsome revel. Cockatoos scream with excitement and gladness; honey-eaters whistle and call; drongos chatter and scold the rest of the banqueters; the tiny sun-bird twitters feeble protests; bees and beetles maintain a murmurous soothful sound, a drowsy blending of hum and buzz from the rising of the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... without sufficient foundation of truth, are related of him at this time, which indicate that he was of a frolicsome and mischievous turn: among these is a statement that he was arraigned for deer-poaching in the park of Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote. A satirical reference to Sir Thomas in one of his plays,[30] leads us to think that there is some truth ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... we could all go back to our makers!" sighed the Gubbio plate, thinking of Giorgio Andreoli and the glad and gracious days of the Renaissance: and somehow the words touched the frolicsome souls of the dancing jars, the spinning teapots, the chairs that were playing cards; and the violin stopped its merry music with a sob, and the spinet ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)

... with great staring eyes and face ringed with pale fur—one of those night apes seldom seen by man; a small troop of kinkajous, slender, long-tailed animals which looked to be monkeys, but were not, and which leaped deftly among the branches like frolicsome little devils let loose to play under the jungle moon; a big scaly iguana, its back ridged with saw teeth and its pendulous throat pouch dangling grotesquely under its jaw; and more than one deadly snake and huge ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel

... they reached Venice (they had stopped at half a dozen little old romantic cities in the most frolicsome aesthetic way) she liked their companion better than she had ever liked him before. She did him the justice to recognise that if he was not quite honest with himself he was at least wholly honest with HER. She reckoned up everything he had been ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James

... air was; but a thousand times as much could never tell how clear our spirits were. Nobody made any "demonstration," or cut any frolicsome capers, or even said any thing exuberant. The steadfast brooding breed of England, which despises antics, was present in us all, and strengthened by a soil whose native growth is peril, chance, and marvel. And so we nodded at one another, ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... not, in her feelings, unlike a frolicsome puppy that has received its first vicious kick. She was digesting the new knowledge that there were people who could hurt others deliberately, cruelly, and so far as she knew, without provocation; that there were people whom she had counted her friends ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... to the rawboned sorrel mare, and jogged off down the road, followed by the frisky colt, whose long, slender legs when in motion seemed so fragile that it was startling to witness the temerity with which he kicked up his frolicsome heels. The dogs, with that odd canine affectation of having just perceived the intruders, pursued them with sudden asperity, barking and snapping, and at last came trotting nimbly home, wagging their tails and ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)

... horizon, unhindered by house, or screen of wall, or dusty road. A desert, virgin, hallowed sea, displaying its wild sweetness in the innocence of solitude. The sun alone came thither, weltering in the meadows in a sheet of gold, threading the paths with the frolicsome scamper of its beams, letting its fine-spun, flaming locks droop through the trees, sipping from the springs with amber lips that thrilled the water. Beneath that flaming dust the vast garden ran riot like some delighted beast let loose at the world's very end, far from everything ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... disappeared with Risler and Madame Chebe. As for Monsieur Chebe, who had recovered all his importance, it was impossible to induce him to go. Some one must be there to do the honors, deuce take it! And I assure you that the little man assumed the responsibility! He was flushed, lively, frolicsome, noisy, almost seditious. On the floor below he could be heard talking politics with Vefour's headwaiter, ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... get your little trench mirror directly in front of your face while you are in an upright position. In outdoor shaving—usually performed in the middle of a village square, near the town fountain—one is invariably bumped from behind by one of the lowing kine or frolicsome colts peculiar to the region; to say nothing of a stray auto truck or ambulance which may have broken loose from its moorings. These gentle digs, of course, produce far less gentle digs in one's countenance. In this way, America's ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces

... compact, and with much shorter legs. In appearance, it resembles the ground hog of the north, although a trifle smaller than that animal. In their habits, the prairie dogs are social, never live alone like other animals, but are always found in villages or large settlements. They are a wild, frolicsome set of fellows when undisturbed, restless, and ever on the move. They seem to take especial delight in chattering away the time, and visiting about, from hole to hole, to gossip and talk over one another's affairs; at least, ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... playful question, 'Who is that behind you?' There was a funny pair of spectacles on the mantelshelf, which Canon Wrottesley would playfully place upon his handsome nose, and to small visitors he would accompany the action by a frolicsome 'wowf-wowf.' He loved juvenile parties when he could wear a coloured paper cap on his head or tie a paper apron round his waist, and probably his canonry had come to him through what he himself called his social gifts rather than by his reputation as ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

... attempt a complete description of Ransom's ill-starred views, being convinced that the reader will guess them as he goes, for they had a frolicsome, ingenious way of peeping out of the young man's conversation. I shall do them sufficient justice in saying that he was by natural disposition a good deal of a stoic, and that, as the result of a considerable intellectual experience, he was, in social and political matters, a reactionary. ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... cricketing costume, and exhibited the health and manners of youthful Englishmen of station. Frolicsome young bulls bursting on an assemblage of sheep, they might be compared to. The chairman welcomed them a trifle snubbingly. The colour mounted to the cheeks of Mr. Raikes as he made incision in the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... moment came running in a little girl, bounding and frolicsome as a young fawn from its covert, who, hearing the word prisoner, and seeing a man of such a preposessing and benign aspect in custody, immediately came up to Wrinstone, and laid hold of the skirts of his ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... the honour,' Ulick made answer, so that Mr. Kendal's smile grew broad. It was the funniest thing to see Ulick sporting with Sophy's gravity, constraining her to playfulness, with something of the compulsion exercised by a large frolicsome puppy upon a sober old dog of ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... about in each leafy tree; In the leafy trees so broad and tall, Like a green and beautiful palace hall, With its airy chambers, light and boon, That open to sun, and stars, and moon; That open unto the bright blue sky, And the frolicsome winds ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various

... the petting what it was at first. Mary was far from being in the almost frolicsome mood which had possessed her at Buxton; her hopes and spirits had sunk to the lowest pitch, and though she had an admirably sweet and considerate temper, and was scarcely ever fretful or unreasonable with her attendants, still depression, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... not many. They are very common in summer, but not as hardy as the Downies, and most of them go off south for the winter. They are very merry, frolicsome birds, with all sorts of tricks and manners—even Dodo's Flickers are no jollier members of the ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... present at the birthday evening, wrote in frolicsome terms, from which the young hostess judged that with him the progress of love was satisfactory. "My dear young relation, near Paddington Station, of course I will come to your show. If forced to leave early, you won't think me surly; I have to meet some one you ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge

... is in a frolicsome mood," he said. "It has sport with the men of Tandakora. It dances, and it throws jests at them. It says, 'You think you can catch me, but you cannot. Why do you come so slowly? Why don't you hurry? I am here. See, I wait a little. I do not go as ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler

... doth she deem The love of field or stream— She is frolicsome and lightsome as the roe; She is here and she is there, On the earth or in the air, Ever changing, floats the Spirit of ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... I fear, the acquaintance with Bunny is too limited for us to appreciate his frolicsome ways and his happy, fun-loving disposition. The tame things which we sometimes see about country yards are often stupid, like a playful kitten spoiled by too much handling; and the flying glimpse we sometimes get of a bundle of brown fur, scurrying ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long

... then the bugle, so blithely resounding? Hear'st thou its echoes through wood and through plain? Oh, might I now, on my nimble steed bounding, Join with the jocund, the frolicsome train. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... more of politics," said the frolicsome Berliners; "he is absorbed in the arts and sciences, and, above all other things, he lives to promote the peaceful prosperity of his people." The balance of power and foreign relations troubled him no longer; he wished for ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... frolicsome imps danced in his splendid blue eyes. "Any of you chaps got a rope handy? Time this fellow was strung up over a limb to be a picture for coyotes ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill

... banquet; when she observed the god of riches, inebriated with nectar, roll out of the heavenly residence, and passing into the Olympian Gardens, throw himself on a vernal bank. She seized this opportunity to become familiar with the god. The frolicsome deity honoured her with his caresses; and from this amour sprung the god of Love, who resembles his father in jollity and mirth, and his mother in his nudity. The allegory is ingenious. The union of poverty with riches must inevitably produce the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... clouds come sailing over, flinging their shadows to the plains,—shadows wavering down the mountain-sides with an indescribable sweet tremulousness, scudding over the lower summits, pursued by some frolicsome gale which we do not see, or resting softly in the dells, whose throbbing soothes itself to stillness in the grateful shade. And still, midway between heaven and earth, snatched up from the turmoil of the one into the unspeakable calm of the other, a great peace and rest ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... Flavia, who kept her father on thorns by her gay and frolicsome criticisms, "you will no longer blame me for falling in love with a poor Bohemian, for you see that he is a Champdoce, and that ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... path of Hera, queen of the gods. The jealous goddess sought her errant husband, who was amusing himself with some nymphs, and Echo, full of mischievous glee, kept her in talk until the nymphs had fled to safety. Hera was furious indeed when she found out that a frolicsome nymph had dared to play on her such a trick, and ruthlessly she spoke ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... character and beauty, and perhaps can better understand the enticings of a siren or fantastic Lurlei than the classical scholar. In the flush of aureal light tinging their pearly glimmering armor are the radiant, graceful, frolicsome inhabitants of the sea. The glutinous or oily exudation that covers them is a brilliant varnish. Their lustrous colors, variety of crystalline tints and beautiful markings and spots, attract the eye of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... never meet, for there is a fatality in my eyes which would strike him dead. He had heard of Thule, the little woodcutter who was called so brave and generous and true. He tried you, you see; and so did my frolicsome sister, who was fairly ablaze with delight when she found you could not ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May

... serene, kindly look of Mrs. Elderkin was in itself the tenderest welcome; and it was an ennobling thought to Reuben, that he had at last placed himself (or fancied he had) upon the same moral plane with that good woman. As for Rose, the joyous, frolicsome, charming Rose, whom he had thought at one time to electrify by his elegant city accomplishments,—was not even the graceful Rose a veteran in the Christian army in which he had but now enlisted? Why, then, should ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... A rollicksome, frolicsome, rare old cock As ever did nothing was our dog Jock; A gleesome, fleasome, affectionate beast, As slow at a fight as swift at a feast; A wit among dogs, when his life 'gan fail, One couldn't but see the old ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various

... swearing; to make short of the story, the doctor rode about the fair, without either hat or wig, at the pleasure and discretion of his horse, among the ruined and overturned stalls and the dissipated mob, who concluded both the quack and the steed to be either mad or bewitched, and enjoyed their frolicsome situation. ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... A Mule, frolicsome from want of work and from overmuch corn, galloped about in a very extravagant manner, and said to himself: "My father surely was a high-mettled racer, and I am his own child in speed and spirit." On the next day, being driven a long journey, and feeling very weary, he exclaimed ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop

... romp together! What red cheeks and what angels' eyes! but they have no shoes nor stockings. They dance on the green rampart, just on the place where, according to the old story, the ground always sank in, and where a sportive, frolicsome child had been lured by means of flowers, toys and sweetmeats into an open grave ready dug for it, and which was afterwards closed over the child; and from that moment, the old story says, the ground gave way no longer, the mound remained firm and fast, and was quickly covered with the green turf. ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... said the Earl of Derby, "that old England who takes a frolicsome brain-fever once every two or three years, for the benefit of her doctors, and the purification of the torpid lethargy brought on by peace and prosperity, is now gone stark staring mad on the subject of a real or supposed ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... summer breeze which blew in from a sun-kissed orchard of ripening fruit which he could see without—an old orchard in which soft, green grass grew between the laden trees, and where the sun filtered through the foliage; and upon the dappled greensward a little child was playing with a frolicsome puppy. ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... condition, and the babe, especially, had regained its infantile merriment, and played at rough and tumble on the soft skins before the fire like any other child of two years, as the squaw reckoned its age. It was very lively and frolicsome, and served to make merry many an hour that otherwise would have lagged heavily on their hands. Not so its mother; she had regained her strength, but no effort could bring back the smile to her lip or ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle

... that the philosophic truth contained in these lines has ever before been pointed out. The beautiful lines which the poet, in his prodigality, put into the mouth of one of his gay frolicsome characters, the meaning of them he no doubt thought might have been understood by every one; but his commentators do not seem to have done so. In some editions turning his side has been put for face, which is feeble and unmeaning. And I do not think the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various

... suddenly stopped. His reputation for rudeness was so well established that she moved away to a safe distance, before she ventured to look at him again. He took no notice of her—he seemed to be considering with himself. The frolicsome young woman had done him a service: ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins

... Poesy, whose white cliffs Cloud its deeps with their hieroglyphs, Alpine fantasies heaped and wrought At will by the frolicsome winds of Thought,— By shores of Beauty, whose colors pass Faintly into the misty glass,— By hills of Truth, whose glories show Distorted, broken, and dimmed, as we know,— Kissed by the tremulous long green tress ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... protected me from these dangers might make possible the secret incursions of larger creatures. The disadvantage of this semi-marine style of architecture, as I looked at it, was that some night a big tidal wave might come along, chasing a frolicsome earthquake, and bearing my house and myself along with it, leave us hanging high and dry in the tops of some clump of palm trees half a ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme

... as soon as he had subdued the ardour of his frolicsome little steed to a steadier gait, varied only by an occasional curvet, "yesterday I was made to read in the Chronicles of the Kings of Scotland, and lo, it was the Douglas did this and the Douglas said that, till I cried out upon Master Kennedy, ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... to the curve of his back, his paws shifting and turning the apple, he is a pretty sight, and his bright, pert appearance atones for all the mischief he does. At home, in the woods, he is the most frolicsome and loquacious. The appearance of anything unusual, if, after contemplating it a moment, he concludes it not dangerous, excites his unbounded mirth and ridicule, and he snickers and chatters, hardly able to contain himself; now darting up the trunk of a tree and squealing in derision, then hopping ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs

... what they had done to dear old Raglan. Marquis had been chained up almost all the time they were in London, and freedom is blessed even to a dog: Dick was ever joyful under his mistress, and now was merry with the keen invigorating air of a frosty December morning, and frolicsome amidst the early snow, which lay unusually thick on the ground, notwithstanding his hundred and twenty miles' ride, for they had taken nearly a week to do it; so that between them they soon raised Dorothy's spirits ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... Sue seemed to hover round him and prevent his flirting and drinking with the frolicsome girls who made advances—wistful to gain a little joy. At ten o'clock he came away, choosing a circuitous route homeward to pass the gates of the college whose head had just sent him ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... Mrs. Gordon, very much surprised. "He is a frolicsome boy, but I never thought there ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May

... youngsters! Who of us with the burden of life's toil and care weighing us down, ever saw a frolicsome group of them, happy in their freedom from trouble and care, and did not wish he might slip his shoulders from under the load of his fifty years and be a boy again? What a pity it is that we must age and die in our wrinkles, leaving nothing better to gaze upon than a shrunken ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... which should justify the good opinion his countrymen had formed of him, should reasonably satisfy the expectations excited by his lighter books, and lay for him the basis of enduring reputation. All that he had done before was the play of careless genius, the exercise of frolicsome fancy, which might amuse and perhaps win an affectionate regard for the author, but could not justify a high respect or secure a permanent place in literature. For this, some work of scholarship ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... in the glasses and toasts were given. Several guests of distinction spoke first, then followed the hosts and their children,—frolicsome little things. Finally Monjardin arose and unfolded a manuscript, asking permission to declaim the verses which he had composed in honor of Maria-Jose, the central figure of the occasion. The guests greeted his remarks ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

... Jest what I've always said of her! "A little 'asty in her temper"—'ullo, must be a 'itch in the machinery, there!—"neither obstinate nor 'aughty"—(A snort from Aunt MARIA at this)—"her inclination to love never unreasonable." 'Ow like her! "Frolicsome, inclined to flirt and sometimes mischievous." You giddy little thing! Up to all your little tricks, this machine is! "Fertile in imagination, domesticated, thoughtful and persevering"—There's Aunt MARIA ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various

... were the same age. They had rolled on floor and deck together when neither could hurt—and now neither would. For the animal was perfectly harmless, and chained only because apt to be unseasonably frolicsome. When they let him loose, it was a season of high jinks and rare skylarking. Then the men had to look out! He had twice knocked a man overboard, and had once tumbled overboard himself. But he had never killed ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... there was no need to draw the curtains. Servants were bringing in the tea-things. Children were playing about the floors,—laughing, beautiful children. Behold them, shivering beggar-boy! Lean by the iron rail, wait patiently in the rain, and look in upon them; it is worth your while. How frolicsome and light-hearted they seem! They are never cold, and seldom very hungry, and the world is dry to them, and comfortable. And they all have beds,—delicious beds. Mothers' hands tuck them in; mothers' lips teach them to say their little prayers, and kiss them good-night. Foolish fellow! ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... concerning him and his romantic deeds. The story of his "amazing marriage," by which he succeeded in wedding six hundred damsels all at once, is one of the most curious. Bappa, while still a youth, was appealed to, one holiday, by the frolicsome maidens of a neighbouring village, who, led by the daughter of the Solankini chief of Nagda, in accordance with the custom upon this particular saint's day, had come out to indulge in swinging, but who had forgotten to supply themselves with a swinging-rope. ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... fierce that they do not hesitate, upon occasions, to attack man himself. Their method of killing horses is very deliberate. Two wolves generally undertake the cold-blooded murder. They approach their victim with the most innocent looking and frolicsome gambols, lying down and rolling about, and frisking pleasantly until the horse becomes a little accustomed to them. Then one approaches right in front, the other in rear, still frisking playfully, until they think themselves near enough, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne

... balcony, long ages ago 'Old Q' sat at gaze,—who now passes below? A frolicsome statesman, the Man ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker

... Dorothy! of course we mean to be as busy as bees, and as frolicsome as kittens!" returned Phillis, who had recovered her old sprightliness, and was ready to-day for a dozen Mrs. Cheynes and all the clergy of the diocese. "Now, mammie, you are only to peep into this room: this is our ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... him to a parlour, a cool shady room on the farther side of the tiny quadrangle, and, muttering something inaudible, withdrew. A moment later a frolicsome laugh, and the light flutter of a woman's skirt as she tripped across the court, brought the blood to his cheeks. He went a step nearer to the door, and his eyes ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... times there would include itself in his castle-building the figure of a young, fresh, fair-faced maiden of the mercantile or other rich grade of society, a woman who could both play and sing. He also dreamed of little descendants who should perpetuate the name of Chichikov; perhaps a frolicsome little boy and a fair young daughter, or possibly, two boys and quite two or three daughters; so that all should know that he had really lived and had his being, that he had not merely roamed the world ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... varied colours of heath, fern, and furze, and scattered with flocks of the white bleached mountain sheep, and herds of sturdy little black cattle; while the valley, nearer at hand, was fringed with woods, sheltering verdant pasture land, watered by the same clear frolicsome stream that danced through the garden—Olivia's garden—brilliant with roses and other beauties, such as the great Harrison himself ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... emulous waves, Toward that whirling current, laughing and buoyant, with curves, Where the great vessel sailing and tacking displaced the surface, Larger and smaller waves in the spread of the ocean yearnfully flowing, The wake of the sea-ship after she passes, flashing and frolicsome under the sun, A motley procession with many a fleck of foam and many fragments, Following the stately and rapid ship, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... who waited on Alatiel to ply her with divers sorts of blended wines; which command the man faithfully executed. She, suspecting nothing, and seduced by the delicious flavour of the liquor, drank somewhat more freely than was seemly, and forgetting her past woes, became frolicsome, and incited by some women who trod some measures in the Majorcan style, she shewed the company how they footed it in Alexandria. This novel demeanour was by no means lost on Pericone, who saw in it a good omen of his ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... the security of the journey. Near Marmoustiers the seneschal, rendered sleepy by the heat, seeing it was the month of August, waggled about in his saddle, like a diadem upon the head of a cow, and seeing so frolicsome and so pretty a lady by the side of so old a fellow, a peasant girl, who was squatting near the trunk of a tree and drinking water out of her stone jug inquired of a toothless old hag, who picked up a trifle by gleaning, if this princess was ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... Billy Whiskers—frolicsome, mischief-making, adventure-loving, Billy Whiskers—is the friend of every boy and girl the country over, and the things that happen to this wonderful goat and his numerous animal friends make the best sort of reading ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart

... side of the ridge. Fitzpiers wondered what it could mean; but such wind as there was just now blew in an adverse direction, and his mood was light. He set down the origin of the sound to one of the superstitious freaks or frolicsome scrimmages between sweethearts that still survived in Hintock from old-English times; and waited on where he stood till ten minutes had passed. Feeling then a little uneasy, his mind reverted to the scream; and he ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... after three of the biggest boys of the school was proposed—and friend and foe, frolicsome as ever, were soon united in ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... afternoon of senior week, which is the week before commencement when the seniors' work is over though the rest of the classes are still toiling over their June exams. Some morning a senior who feels particularly young and frolicsome suggests to her friends at chapel that, as the time-honored ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde

... brother, ever ready for play, although, as a matter of fact, it had been there long before the Canal had been even thought of by the men who built it. But thousands of years couldn't make that River grow old. It was full of frolicsome ripples that gleamed in the sun, and of rapids and waterfalls. Here it would flow swiftly, and there almost stop as if it wanted to fall asleep. And every once in a while it would dart swiftly like small boys or dogs chasing butterflies. Sometimes it would ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson

... fastens on frolicsome boys, O'er the stone way racing, with careless noise. Hark!—hark!—the wild Thur, how he batters his rocks! But YE gaze, laugh, and greet the gruff chider, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... she encountered fauns, who looked like sunburnt country people, except that they had hairy ears, and little horns upon their foreheads, and the hinder legs of goats, on which they gambolled merrily about the woods and fields. They were a frolicsome kind of creature, but grew as sad as their cheerful dispositions would allow when Ceres inquired for her daughter, and they had no good news to tell. But sometimes she came suddenly upon a rude gang of satyrs, who had faces like ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... has tended to cause coldness, and even aversion, between the bridal pair. Joan, scarcely fifteen, is far ahead of her age. Gifted with a brilliant and mobile mind, a noble and lofty character, a lively and glowing fancy, now free and frolicsome as a child, now grave and proud as a queen, trustful and simple as a young girl, passionate and sensitive as a woman, she presents the most striking contrast to Andre, who, after a stay of ten years at our court, is wilder, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... this time. Down the hill with a happy heart and a merry countenance, past Andrew's garden, she ran, jumping and leaping in her frolicsome mood; and then about she went, and jumped back again to the garden, for she had espied the pinks all in bloom just within the enclosure, and must look at them again, they, were so beautiful. "I shall soon overtake ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri

... travel rubbed off the bloom of its ancient hospitality and set a vigilant man at the door of the dining-room to collect pay for meals, that this was an abode of comfort and the resort of merry-making and frolicsome provincials. On this now decaying porch no doubt lovers sat in the moonlight, and vowed by the Gut of Canso to be fond of each other forever. The traveler cannot help it if he comes upon the traces of such sentiment. There lingered yet in the house an air of the hospitable old time; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... and best flavored. When alarmed he seizes a capital one by striking his open bill into it, and bears it off to the woods." He eats the rich, succulent, milky young corn with voracity. He is of a gay and frolicsome disposition, and half a dozen of the fraternity are frequently seen diving and vociferating around the high dead limbs of some large trees, pursuing and playing with each other, and amusing the passerby with their gambols. He is a comical fellow, too, prying around ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous

... story has not so much to do with the princess, as with her cats, for she had two; an elderly one, called Glumdalkin, and a very frolicsome young one whose name was Friskarina. Glumdalkin was, somehow or other, second cousin once removed to Friskarina, but years older; and, to say the truth, Friskarina was not very fond of her: however, in consideration of her age and relationship, ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin

... excited than his visitor, and calling out once more, "Why don't they give me my hat," he, the stately dignitary, rushed out like a frolicsome schoolboy. While her husband was talking to Solomin, Valentina Mihailovna looked at him stealthily, trying to make out this new "young man." He was sitting in an armchair, quite at his ease, his bare hands laid on his knee (he had not put on the gloves after all), calmly, although not without a certain ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... and his sister like in stories, and the added ability of giving it to them. Her ideas are touched with the sparkle of real genius and little folks find it a delight to travel in her company. These adventures of a frolicsome goat ...
— A Campfire Girl's First Council Fire - The Camp Fire Girls In the Woods • Jane L. Stewart

... a great awe; she slipped out to unburden herself to Linnet, but Linnet was setting the tea-table in a frolicsome mood and Marjorie's heart could not vent ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin

... faces seemed to look at him mournfully as parting friends. He rapidly made his selection, for that night he was to be off in time to reach the vessel before she sailed, and he felt even glad to avoid the Thanksgiving festivities for which he had so little relish. Diana's frolicsome gaiety seemed heart-breaking to him, on the same principle that ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... you are whirled to Soriano, through the desert Campagna and past Mount Soracte, in a business-like tramway—different from that miserable Olevano affair which, being narrow gauge, can go but slowly and even then has a frolicsome habit of jumping off the rails every few days. From afar you look back upon the city; it lies so low as to be invisible; over its site hovers the dome of Saint Peter, like an iridescent bubble ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... my heart with an indescribable weird, fierce longing. I saw a maiden approach taller and finer than the rest. One glance of her soft, wild eyes and I flew to her arms. "Back, Indians!" I shouted, "honor your queen!" and entered the lists of the frolicsome dance. Wilder beat the drum and faster. As the old Indian warmed to his work, he broke out in a doleful, monotonous song, the words of which I did not understand. It sounded to ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann

... owners. The Landers amused themselves during the greater part of the day, in looking at the gambols of some very handsome goats, which had strayed into their abode, but the sheep were not near so tame or frolicsome, repelling all the advances towards a more familiar acquaintance, by timidity and ill nature. Shrimps and fish, which are caught in the streams in the vicinity of the town, are daily exposed for sale, and the inhabitants appear to be in possession of a greater share of the necessaries and comforts ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... themselves in the halls; and perfumes, by no means from "Araby the blest," keeping them company; while I enjoyed a fit of coughing, which caused my head to spin in a way that made the application of a cool banister both necessary and agreeable, as I waited for the frolicsome wind to restore the breath I'd lost; cheering myself, meantime, with a secret conviction that pneumonia was waiting for me round the corner. This piece of advice had been offered by several persons for a week, and ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott

... intimacy with three men—and was not yet at the end of her string! Not even the pride of dress, the scourge of need, the fire-whips of passion to urge her on, she sinned, as the Yankees would say, simply "to be a-doin' "—broke the Seventh Commandment "more in a frolicsome spirit of camaraderie than anything else." That's the way we used to kill people in Texas. Still I opine that when a young woman gets so awfully jolly that she distributes her favors around promiscuously just to put people in a good humor, she's a shaky piece of furniture to make a fad of—a ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... full of interest and pleasure. What a variety of moods, from the frolicsome to the pathetic, he displayed! But evidently his wife's death had laid hold upon his very soul, and there seemed so much more of sadness and tenderness than on his former visit, when he had enjoyed her bright companionship. On one occasion, referring to a medical missionary who had brought his ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour

... marked by the appearance of Introduction to Esthetics, a book that, even in remaining a fragment, shows the parting of the ways. Under its frolicsome exuberance there is keen analysis, a fine nobility of temper, and abundant subtle observation. The philosophy was Herder's, and a glowing eulogy of him closes the study. Its most original and perhaps most valuable ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... capital in these teasing moods. To be sure, he buffeted one about tremendously, but his claws were sheathed, and there was a contagiousness in his frolicsome humor. Moreover one learned to look upon one's self in the light of a public benefactor. To submit to be knocked about by the Bibliotaph was in a modest way to contribute to the gayety of nations. If one was not absolutely happy one's self, there was a chastened comfort in beholding ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... travelling in pairs, screamed their passing salutation, as they displayed their bright plumage to the sun; while hundreds, of a smaller kind, with crimson shoulder, were concealed amid the green leaves; and, as they rode beneath them, babbled—like frolicsome children of the forest—a rude, but to themselves a ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... and gay and naughty as Julia was steady, limited, narrow, conventional, and dull; but the flighty mother passed out of the Carey family life, and Julia, from the age of five onward, fell into the charge of a pious, unimaginative governess, instead of being turned out to pasture with a lot of frolicsome young human creatures; so at thirteen she had apparently settled—hard, solid, and firm—into a mould. She had smooth fair hair, pale blue eyes, thin lips, and a somewhat too plump shape for her years. She was ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... day in late summer, she went with a motoring party through New England; as frolicsome and giddy a party as could be found among New York society transferred for the summer to the world of Nature. There was to be a dance or a house party or something of the sort at the end of the drive. Hazel scarcely knew, and cared less. She ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill

... seemed almost human in her intelligence, ran towards her mistress, but another, a new pet of Elsie's, a frolicsome, wicked animal that had quite worried poor Fanny's life out ever since her intrusion ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... lands owned by Ezekiel Polk in the "Providence" settlement, and near the present flourishing village of "Pineville." The family mansion, around which "Jimmy Polk" sported with his younger brothers and sisters, and wended their way in frolicsome mood to a neighboring school, was an humble building, made by joining two hewn log houses together, with a passage between, in the common style of the first settlers. In 1851 Mr. Hennigan, the last owner of the property, moved ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... unfortunate Savage has held his intellectual "noctes" and enlivened the old moralist with his mad philosophy. It was from this mansion that "the Bastard" roused the doctor on the memorable night (or morn) when they set out on one of those frolicsome perambulations, which genius, in its weakness and misgivings, sometimes indulges, and which was worthy of the days of modern Corinthianism. We can imagine the sleepy, solemn face of Johnson, the meagre phiz of Savage, and the more rotund features ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various

... former. We are thus, therefore, set free to indulge in the pleasing reflection that when we behold that magnificent gleaming of the sea, which almost resembles liquid silver reflecting the stars of heaven, we are witnessing the frolicsome and joyous gambols of those myriads of little beings to whom the beneficent Creator has assigned the ocean ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... come to the city and have splendid times. Clara Bute bad become the happy wife of a well-to-do farmer, and she sent an urgent request to Belle and Mildred to visit her. The latter would not leave her parents, but Belle accepted gladly, and the gay, frolicsome girl left more than one mild heartache among the rural beaux that vied with ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... daughters of love, usually meaning an Anonyma, a fille de joie; but here the girl is of good repute, and the offensive term must be modified to a gay, frolicsome lass. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... large to be suffered to run about the house, I built a den for him in my court-yard. From that time he was never permitted to be loose, except when brought to the house to be exhibited to my friends. When he was five years old, he did some mischief by pawing and playing with people in his frolicsome moods. Having griped a man one day a little too hard, I ordered him to be shot, for fear of myself incurring the guilt of what might happen. On this a friend, who happened to be then at dinner with me, begged him as a present. How he came ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth

... condition. When they found this nakedness associated with a relation of the sexes utterly opposed to their own, and when, especially, the first white wives on the South Sea beaches, found the joyous, handsome, frolicsome women of the islands, making ardent love to their husbands, the innate heinousness of bodily bareness became fixed as a guiding star towards bringing the ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... long ago, and culminating in the huge mass of the Cecilia Metella tomb, with the mediaeval battlements on its summit. And it was on that walk that we met the calf of The Marble Faun: "A well-grown calf," my father says in his notes, "who seemed frolicsome, shy, and sociable all at the same time; for he capered and leaped to one side, and shook his head, as I passed him, but soon came galloping behind me, and again started aside when I looked round." How little I suspected then (or the bull-calf either, for that matter) that he was to frolic his ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... a lightsome hour was that, And joyful were we to see The sunny face of ilk bonnie brat, So full of frolicsome glee. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... reasonable to suppose, however, that the old gentleman was somewhat beguiled from his grief by the lively dispositions and playful antics of Lamech's grandsons, Noah's sons, and his own great-grandsons,—Shem, Ham, and Japheth,—who at this time had attained to the frolicsome ages of ninety-five, ninety-two, and ninety-one, respectively. These boys inherited from their father a violent penchant for aquatics, and scarcely a day passed that they did not paddle around the bayous and sloughs of the ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field

... and the beautiful Aurora, of whom so much hath been written, said, and sung, did, with her rosy fingers, nip and tweak Miss Pecksniff's nose. It was the frolicsome custom of the Goddess, in her intercourse with the fair Cherry, so to do; or in more prosaic phrase, the tip of that feature in the sweet girl's countenance was always very red at breakfast-time. For the most part, indeed, it wore, at that season of ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... trifle foolish. My judgment is shaken to the earth. Here I've been holding you up as a kind of paragon, a fossilized Galahad, with a horizon just at your elbows, to find you touring France, faisant l'aimable with a frolicsome scapegrace ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... there was a slight commotion on board the brig Queen Anne. A frolicsome tar had thrown out a rope, and hauled in two men one white and one black. The crew thronged ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... what I was about.' But, he adds, 'it seems I judged too well of the world'; and he points his moral with a story of 'the great Dr. Clarke,' who, 'unbending himself with a few friends in the most playful and frolicsome manner,' saw Beau Nash in the distance, and was instantly sobered. 'My boys,' quoth he, 'let us be grave—here comes a fool.' Macaulay was not exactly Beau Nash, nor was Boswell 'the great Dr. Clarke'; ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... realms, and in these our spirits ranged at will, each in turn serving as magic steed to the other, the more alert quickening the drowsy; the world from which our bodies were shut out became the playground of our fancy, which reveled there in frolicsome adventure. The very Lives of the Saints helped us to understand what was so carefully left unsaid! But the day when I was reft of your sweet company, I became a true Carmelite, such as they appeared to us, a modern Danaid, who, instead of trying to fill a bottomless ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... flew open, and with a gay, frolicsome greeting, Pollnitz danced into the room; Anna had turned to the window, and made no reply to his greeting. Madame Pricker stepped toward him, and greeted him with the most profound reverence, calling him master of ceremonies ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... only some few yards away, when suddenly the black shadow seemed to jump into the air, then came down with tappings of hard hoofs on the brick path that ran down the pergola, and with frolicsome skippings galloped off into the bushes. When that was gone Darcy could see quite clearly that a shirted figure sat up in the hammock. For one moment, from sheer terror of the unseen, he hung on his step, and ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... Sans Souci do this? Had the frolicsome fairy sufficient integral strength and self-balance to resist the powerful influences gathering ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... woodpecker. How appropriately patriotic he looked, at the home of Washington, wearing the national colors,—red, white, and blue! After this he became abundant about the capital, so that I saw him often, and took much pleasure in his frolicsome ways; and, some years later, he suddenly appeared in force in the vicinity of Boston, where he remained through the winter months. To my thought, none the less, he will always suggest Mount Vernon. Indeed, although he is certainly rather jovial, ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey



Words linked to "Frolicsome" :   rollicking, frolicky, sportive, playful



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com