frolic

Did You Know?

Frolic is a word rooted in pleasure. Its most common function today is as a verb meaning “to play and run about happily,” as in “children frolicking in the waves,” but it joined the language in the 16th century as an adjective carrying the meaning of its Dutch source vroolijk: “full of fun; merry.” Shakespeare’s Puck used it this way in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, saying “And we fairies … following darkness like a dream, now are frolic.” Verb use quickly followed, and by the early 17th century the word was also being used as a noun, as in “an evening of fun and frolic.”