cavort

verb ca·vort \ kə-ˈvȯrt \

|Updated on: 15 Jul 2018

Examples: cavort in a Sentence

Definition of cavort

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.

See cavort defined for English-language learners

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Examples of cavort in a Sentence

Otters cavorted in the stream.
children cavorting on the first sunny day of spring

Recent Examples of cavort from the Web

In 2016, Gamble, Lyakh, and another man were spotted cavorting on Grand Prismatic Hot Spring in Yellowstone, damaging its sensitive microorganism mats and risking their lives in the process.

— wes siler, Outside Online, "Doing It for the ‘Gram Turns Deadly," 9 July 2018
The Parrs also cavort amid a very distinctive visual milieu.

— josephine livingstone, The New Republic, "The Incredibles 2 Addresses the State of the Union," 19 June 2018
Cunanan wanted to travel in the highest echelons of society, clinking glasses with socialites and cavorting on yachts.

— rachel syme, New Republic, "FX’s “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” examines a lethal delusion.," 16 Feb. 2018
On top, three rabbits cavort like Matisse’s Dancers; below a solitary rabbit poses like Rodin’s Thinker.

— roberta smith, New York Times, "Three Artists, Three Arcs, One Gallery," 31 May 2018
On December 14, as that spectacle of Pai cavorting with the far right was zipping around the world, the FCC commissioners met to consider the fate of net neutrality.

— andrew rice, WIRED, "This Is Ajit Pai, Nemesis of Net Neutrality," 16 May 2018
With folk music blasting from the stereos of parked cars, groups of protesters would break off from the crowds to link arms and cavort in concentric circles.

— amie ferris-rotman, Washington Post, "Did Armenia just dance its way to revolution?," 3 May 2018
Elsewhere, Comey describes Trump as lapsing into paranoia about the Steele dossier, especially one of its more colorful (and unproven) allegations: that Trump had once cavorted with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room.

— NBC News, "Comey, in new book, paints Trump as a liar divorced from reality," 13 Apr. 2018
As the new queen formally entered Paris after her coronation, the king stood in a prominent window shamelessly cavorting with his maîtresse-en-titre.

— john steele gordon, WSJ, "‘Francis I’ Review: A Royal Renaissance," 27 Mar. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'cavort.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Origin and Etymology of cavort

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 ¹curvet; that it is comprised of the unstressed expressive prefix ca- (as in caboodle) and ³vault; 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.

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First Known Use: 1794

in the meaning defined at sense 1

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