Gambol

verb

To merrily skip or prance about

noun

An instance of prancing about jocularly

Usage

Have you ever been so happy you just have to jump up and down and all over the place? Hopefully there are enough positive things in your life to keep you in a good mood, but it takes a true stroke of great fortune to send us skipping ecstatically. By saving our energy to only gambol about when something remarkably fantastic happens to us, we show the people in our lives what’s most important to us, and when it’s time to really celebrate.

To gambol means to prance or frolic around gleefully. Though the word is a bit of an oddity, it can be used to describe the kind of prancing around you might give in to when overtaken by an ecstatic or energetic feeling. Thus, anything that elicits profound joy in you can induce gamboling. You might gambol when finding out you got cast in the lead role in a play, in response to hearing the whole office has the day off on Friday, or for countless other joyous occasions! If you’re particularly delighted, an abstract concept such as your imagination might gambol as its flits merrily between ideas. When the good times roll, and your body rolls with them, you gambol.

Gambol can also be employed as a noun to denote the act of frolicking itself. If your infectious merrymaking in your office upon hearing of your four-day work week got the rest of your coworkers to skip to the break room, you could say that your gambol caused everyone to gambol to the lounge to celebrate.

Example: As soon as he saw his exemplary test results, he started to gambol through the halls.

Example: His signature gambol after scoring a touchdown was infamous throughout the league.

Origin

Gambol traces all the way back to the Greek word kampe, which means “bending joint or ligament,” and was adapted into the Late Latin gamba, meaning “a horse’s leg.” This word was then adapted into the Middle French noun gambade and verb gambader. The noun evolved into the early 16th century English word gambolde, meaning “a jump or skip,” before arriving in its present form by the end of the century. The verb form also entered English as gambade early in the same century, and can still be found primarily in Scottish English to mean for a horse to bound over an obstacle or for one to pull a prank. Another of its ancestors, gambado, branched off to develop its own specialized meaning - in this case, either to refer to the leaping maneuver of a gambade or to the leather leg guards on a saddle. Gambade finally found its way to our present gambol by late in the 16th century with its present meaning, “to frolic.”

Derivative Words

Gambols: The simple present conjugation of gambol indicates when a third-party is frolicking.

Example: Every time her favorite show comes on, she gambols into the living room, snacks in hand.

Gamboling: The progressive form of gambol describes when one is in the process of traipsing merrily about.

Example: The dog would always greet any family member he recognized by gamboling up to them.

Gamboled: The past tense form is used when one has pranced about at some prior point.

Example: He gamboled around his room more and more each morning as the movie release date drew closer.

In Literature

From Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver:

In the wilderness, only the most terrible beasts of prey cavort and gambol. Deer and rabbits play no games.

Illustrating the grim reality of the food chain, Stephenson remarks that only nature’s predators have the luxury of frolicking about, or gamboling, while the prey can never drop their guard, lest they become hunted.

Mnemonic

If you win a big gamble, you might gambol about with glee!
When you gambol, you amble about joyfully.