• frolic •
Pronunciation: frah-lik • Hear it!Part of Speech: Noun, mass (no plural)
Meaning: To make merry, to gambol, to romp or caper about worry-free.
Notes: Don't forget to add the [k] to today's word when extending it with suffixes like frolicker, frolicked, or frolicking (compare: traffic : trafficker, picnic : picnicker). A person in the mood to frolic is frolicsome. I hope you know lots of frolicsome people.
In Play: Like gambol, today's word is usually associated with children and animals: "Serafina and Giorgio sat on the porch, watching the children and squirrels frolicking together on the front lawn." Of course, it may be used figuratively to simply refer to a mirthful time, "I heard that Phil Anders and Emma Chisit frolicked the weekend away in Las Vegas."
Word History: Today's Good Word comes from Dutch vrolijk "merry", made up of Middle Dutch vro "happy" + -lijk "-ly, like", akin to German fröhlich "happy." The suffix here is related to the Old English ancestor of like, which reduced itself to -ly in Modern English. However, like is now making a comeback in such words as lady-like, bell-like, fern-like. These words are currently compound nouns comprising some word plus the regular word, like, but 300 years from now like will again reduce to an affix, either merging with the current suffix -ly or assuming a similar form.
