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

• dance
• gambol
• frolic
• hop
• romp
• leap
• skip
• rollick
• tumble
• caper
• revel
• lark

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

Monroe, Lemmon and Curtis cavorted there. —Nick Canepa, San Diego Union-Tribune, 6 Sep. 2025

Contreras tagged Randy Rodriguez’s hanging slider in the bottom of the ninth, cavorting around the bases while his teammates spilled out of the home dugout. —Andrew Baggarly, New York Times, 23 Aug. 2025

To match its maritime origins, it was incised with designs of cavorting Tritons and surmounted with a silver Neptune riding a hippocampus—a lot of gaudy ornament around a big brown husk. —The Editors, JSTOR Daily, 26 June 2025

Masked protesters, dancing and cavorting around burning American flags. —James Rainey, Los Angeles Times, 11 June 2025

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

Rhymes for cavort

• abort
• airport
• alport
• athwart
• carport
• comport
• consort
• deport
• distort
• escort
• exhort
• extort

Kids Definition

cavort

verb

ca·​vort kə-ˈvȯ(ə)rt 

: to leap or dance about in a lively manner