Michael T. Kaufman
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Frolic is a word rooted in pleasure. Its most common function today is as a verb meaning “to play and move 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.”
Examples of frolic in a Sentence
Literary Hub, 20 May 2026
By watching every moment of his famous subjects frolicking around the studio, we’d all be deprived of the chance to cherish the best seconds of it.
—Christian Zilko, IndieWire, 17 May 2026
Scott Hocker, TheWeek, 14 Apr. 2026
And Ben Ahlers, who plays the adult Happy, comes with that actor’s famously warm smile and chirpy demeanor, slowly worn down here before your eyes, as the permissible frolics of youth turn into the stasis of one going nowhere.
—Chris Jones, New York Daily News, 10 Apr. 2026
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Cite this Entry
“Frolic.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/frolic. Accessed 11 Jun. 2026.
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