cavort

verb

ca·​vort kə-ˈvȯrt 

cavorted; cavorting; cavorts

intransitive verb

1

: to leap or dance about in a lively manner

Otters cavorted in the stream.

2

: to engage in extravagant behavior

The governor has been criticized for cavorting with celebrities.

Synonyms

• caper
• disport
• frisk
• frolic
• gambol
• lark
• rollick
• romp
• sport

Examples of cavort in a Sentence

Otters cavorted in the stream.

children cavorting on the first sunny day of spring

Recent Examples on the Web

Some 500 of them cavorted at Frank Buck’s Jungle Camp on a humanmade structure called Monkey Mountain. —Greg Daugherty, Smithsonian Magazine, 2 Dec. 2024

Thus Andy Dixon paints Day-Glo takes on Rococo romances, with sculptural nudes draped in loose tunics cavorting around pleasure gardens dotted with classical statuary; these same motifs are distilled into dainty arabesques and diaphanous whorls in the abstract canvases of Michaela Yearwood-Dan. —Rachel Wetzler, Artforum, 1 Dec. 2024

But watch what Cobbs does behind the bar as Billy Ray carries on, tossing 20s, cavorting with slinky women, and taunting men who could snap him like a toothpick. —Matt Zoller Seitz, Vulture, 3 July 2024

The photos showed Beth cavorting with the 77-year-old queen, rubbing noses with King Charles, and even helping unveil a plaque at the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home in 2020. —Theresa Braine, New York Daily News, 18 Nov. 2024

Word History

Etymology

earlier also cauvaut, cavault, covault, of obscure origin

Note: All early attestations of the word are North American, the first known (as cauvauted) in a letter written by the North Carolina politician John Steele in April, 1794. Various etymologies have been suggested: that the word is altered from curvet entry 1; that it is comprised of the unstressed expressive prefix ca- (as in caboodle) and vault entry 3; that it has some relation with French chahuter "to dance the chahut (a boisterous, somewhat indecent dance), to make an uproar" (see Leo Spitzer, "Cavort," Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. 48 (1949), pp. 132-37). Apparently the same word is cavaulting "coition" in John Camden Hotten's A Dictionary of Modern, Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words (London, 1859). In the second edition of Hotten's dictionary (London, 1860) the word has the etymological note "Lingua Franca, cavolta," though there appears to be no evidence for such a word in Lingua Franca.

First Known Use

1794, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Kids Definition

cavort

verb

ca·​vort kə-ˈvȯ(ə)rt 

: to leap or dance about in a lively manner