curvetted

Verb

curvet (third-person singular simple present curvets, present participle curvetting or curveting, simple past and past participle curvetted or curveted)

1. (intransitive) Of a horse or, by extension, another animal: to leap about, to frolic.
   • Sometime he trots, as if he told the steps, / With gentle majesty and modest pride; / Anon he rears upright, curvets and leaps, / As who should say, 'Lo! thus my strength is tried; / And this I do to captivate the eye / Of the fair breeder that is standing by.'1593, [William Shakespeare], Venus and Adonis, London: […] Richard Field, […], →OCLC, lines [277-282]
2. (transitive) To cause to leap about, dart or jump.
   • […] I could no more travel the same Path, again and again, than I could have Patience to mount a managed Horse, in the Riding-House, and curvet it in the same Spot, for three Hours together.1766, Elizabeth Griffith, A Series of Genuine Letters between Henry and Frances, London: W. Johnston, Volume III, Letter 447, pp. 256-257
3. To fly or swim with darting movements.
   • […] flights of small, low-flying brown doves chased one another to and fro, and bee-eaters, emerald-green, curvetted like slow swallows.1934 October, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], “Chapter 6”, in Burmese Days, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, →OCLC
4. (figuratively) (of a person) To prance; to caper, frolic.
   • He curvetted back into the living-room […]1943, Sinclair Lewis, chapter V, in Gideon Planish, London: Jonathan Cape, page 44
5. (figuratively) (of an object) To jump, skip, shake.
   • […] you must know that when the second iron is thrown overboard, it thenceforth becomes a dangling, sharp-edged terror, skittishly curvetting about both boat and whale, entangling the lines, or cutting them, and making a prodigious sensation in all directions.1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Chapter 63”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC

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