playsome

playsome

English

Etymology

From play +‎ -some.

Adjective

playsome (comparative more playsome, superlative most playsome)

1. (dated, chiefly literary) Playful; frolicsome.[1]
   • c. 1690, John Aubrey, "On Thomas Hobbes" in Characters from the Histories & Memoirs of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1918):

     I have heard his brother Edm and M'r Wayte his schoole fellow &c, say that when he was a Boy he was playsome enough: but withall he had even then a contemplative Melancholinesse.

   • 1855, James Avis Bartley, "Elfindale" in Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems:

     Sweet Frankie lives in Elfindale;

     Where all the flowers are fair, and frail

     (Like her fair self,) a slender fairy,

     And like a zephyr, playsome, airy,

     But lovelier far, than buxom Mary.

   • c. 1880, William Barnes, "The girt woak tree that's in the dell":

     An' down below's the cloty brook

     Where I did vish with line an' hook,

     An' beat, in playsome dips and zwims,

     The foamy stream, wi' white-skinned lim's.

Synonyms

• carefree, merry, sportive, wanton

Derived terms

• playsomely
• playsomeness

References

1. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (1989)

Anagrams

• maypoles