Word.ws English Dictionary

cavorting

cavorting is the present participle and gerund of cavort.

Meaning of cavort

Verb

cavort (third-person singular simple present cavorts, present participle cavorting, simple past and past participle cavorted)

  1. To prance, frolic, gambol.
    • […] when the young man whirled his horse, “hazed” Jupiter in circles and belaboured him with a rawhide quirt, […] He ceased his cavortings […]1920, Peter B. Kyne, chapter I, in The Understanding Heart
  2. (intransitive) To move about carelessly, playfully or boisterously.
    • And dragon-flies sported around and cavorted, / As poets say dragon-flies ought to do; […]1900, Guy Wetmore Carryl, “The Embarrassing Episode of Little Miss Muffet”, in Mother Goose for Grownups
    Synonyms:
    romp, frolic, prance, caper
  3. (informal) To engage in extravagant pursuits, especially of a sexual nature.
    • As he moves back into the shadows, the stage is taken over by a troupe of Pan-like dancers, leaping and cavorting in an obscene ballet.1965, Attila Zohar, Kings Cross Black Magic, Sydney: Horwitz Publications, page 94

Noun

cavorting (plural cavortings)

  1. The action of the verb to cavort
    • ‘… that your blithe inattention to your own dear grammatical mother’s cavortings with not one not two but over thirty Near Eastern medical attachés…?’1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest […], Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 30

Forms of cavorting

pluralcavortings

Questions about cavorting

What does cavorting mean?
Cavorting means the action of the verb to cavort.
What is cavorting the present participle and gerund of?
Cavorting is the present participle and gerund of cavort.
What part of speech is cavorting?
Cavorting is a noun.
What is the plural of cavorting?
The plural of cavorting is cavortings.

Words near cavorting in the dictionary

  1. cavorted
  2. cavorter
  3. cavorters
  4. cavorteth
  5. cavortin
  6. cavorting
  7. cavortingly
  8. cavortings
  9. cavorts
  10. cavosteliid
  11. cavosteliids

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cavorting (page history and authors); cavort (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “cavorting.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cavorting. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.