a. Also frolicksom(e. [f. FROLIC v. or sb. + -SOME.] Full of frolic; gay, merry, mirthful.
1699. Shaftesb., Virtue, II. II. iii. A gay and frolicksome Delight in what is injurious to others.
1724. R. Falconer, Voy. (1769), 86. Instead of coming on board to be Frolicksome and Merry, we should have given Thanks to him, that gave us the Blessing of thinking we were no longer subject to such Hardships, that we might probably have undergone, if we had been detain’d longer on that Island.
1791. Boswell, Johnson, Ded., Dr. Clarke … was unbending himself … in the most playful and frolicksome manner.
1807–8. W. Irving, Salmagundi (1824), 147. In their frolicksome malice the Fates had ordered that a French boarding-house, or Pension Française, as it was called, should be established directly opposite my aunt’s residence.
1863. Geo. Eliot, Romola, I. x. Mingled with the more decent holiday-makers there were frolicsome apprentices.
Hence Frolicsomely adv., Frolicsomeness.
1727. Bailey, Frolicksomness.
1833. Blackw. Mag., XXXVIII. 23. It would not be bad, however, if they gave way merely to the wild mischievous frolicsomeness and libertinism of advanced boyhood, such as sprout out of our universities and those of Germany; but boyhood, is a state of being not known in France—(the man is at once grafted upon the child); and, instead of the joyous carelessness and prompt impressionability of that beautiful and healthful period of expansion and of growth, we see the principles, the passions, the vices and, it may be, the intellect and virtues of man in full exercise before the age of twenty.
1874. T. Hardy, Madding Crowd, I. xiii. 163. ‘Capital!’ she exclaimed, throwing down the letter frolicsomely.
188[?]. R. G. H[ill], Voices in Solitude, 195. The fresh breeze … frolicsomely flaps them on her breast.
