: a skipping or leaping about in play
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In Middle French, the noun gambade referred to the frisky spring of a jumping horse. In the early 1500s, English speakers adopted the word as gambol as both a verb and a noun. (The noun means "a skipping or leaping about in play.") The English word is not restricted to horses, but rather can be used of any frolicsome creature. It is a word that suggests levity and spontaneity, and it tends to be used especially of the lively activity of children or animals engaged in active play.
Examples of gambol in a Sentence
Verb
lambs gamboling in the meadow
dog owners chat while their pooches gambol on the park's great lawn
Noun
she and her old college roommate headed off for one final European gambol before returning to the States to start their separate careers
Recent Examples on the Web
Eric Adler, Kansas City Star, 10 Oct. 2025
An escaped pet zebra that went on the lam in Tennessee was captured Sunday after gamboling in the forest for more than a week.
—Theresa Braine, New York Daily News, 8 June 2025
Scott Hocker, theweek, 26 Nov. 2024
In the winning first moments of the show, Mills gambols on as the Narrator, wielding a paint palette and, instead of a brush, a tuft of rainbow-colored gauze.
—Celia Wren, Washington Post, 12 Dec. 2023
See All Example Sentences for gambol
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Verb
His nephew said that, for decades, his grandparents had kept alive a faint hope that maybe their hero son had just been captured and would one day come gamboling through the front door to the family’s Brookside home.
—Eric Adler, Kansas City Star, 10 Oct. 2025
An escaped pet zebra that went on the lam in Tennessee was captured Sunday after gamboling in the forest for more than a week.
—Theresa Braine, New York Daily News, 8 June 2025
Noun
His shakshuka takes the tomato-and-pepper mold and spins it into a gambol through fields of celery and coriander seeds, ground chipotles and sweet paprika.
—Scott Hocker, theweek, 26 Nov. 2024
In the winning first moments of the show, Mills gambols on as the Narrator, wielding a paint palette and, instead of a brush, a tuft of rainbow-colored gauze.
—Celia Wren, Washington Post, 12 Dec. 2023
See All Example Sentences for gambol
Cite this Entry
“Gambol.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gambol. Accessed 17 Oct. 2025.
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