Word.ws English Dictionary

lark

/lɑːk//lɑɹk/

lark noun: any of various small, singing passerine birds of the family Alaudidae.

lark: any of various small, singing passerine birds of the family Alaudidae
Image: Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

lark (plural larks)

  1. Any of various small, singing passerine birds of the family Alaudidae.
  2. Any of various similar-appearing birds, but usually ground-living, such as the meadowlark and titlark.
  3. (broadly) One who wakes early; one who is up with the larks.
    Antonyms:
    owl
  4. A jolly or peppy person.
    • Charles Randolph Grean is married to pop lark and multi-hit artist Betty Johnson.1990, Wayne Jancik, The Billboard Book of One-Hit Wonders, →ISBN, page 238

Verb (1)

lark (third-person singular simple present larks, present participle larking, simple past and past participle larked)

  1. (intransitive) To catch larks (a type of bird).
    • to go larking

Noun (2)

lark (plural larks)

  1. A frolic or romp, some fun.
    • ‘Ha! ha!’ laughed Master Bates, ‘what a lark that would be, wouldn’t it, Fagin? I say, how the Artful would bother ’em wouldn’t he?’1838, Boz [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], chapter 43, in Oliver Twist; […], volume (please specify |volume=I, II, or III), London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC
    • “Oh, dear, no,” said the young Englishman; “my cousin was coming over on some business, so I just came across, at an hour’s notice, for the lark.”1878, Henry James, An International Episode
  2. A prank.
    • doolittle. […] [T]hanks to your silly joking, he leaves me a share in his Pre-digested Cheese Trust worth three thousand a year on condition that I lecture for his Wannafeller Moral Reform World League as often as they ask me up to six times a year. / higgins. The devil he does! Whew! [Brightening...1912 (date written), [George] Bernard Shaw, “Pygmalion”, in Androcles and the Lion, Overruled, Pygmalion, London: Constable and Company, published 1916, →OCLC, Act V, page 173

Verb (2)

lark (third-person singular simple present larks, present participle larking, simple past and past participle larked)

  1. To sport, engage in harmless pranking.
    • [T]hey laugh at us old boys,” thought old Pendennis. And he was not far wrong; the times and manners which he admired were pretty nearly gone—the gay young men “larked” him irreverently […]1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 68, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published...
    • […] the porter at the rail-road had seen a scuffle; or when he found it was likely to bring him in as a witness, then it might not have been a scuffle, only a little larking […]1855, Elizabeth Gaskell, chapter 35, in North and South
  2. To frolic, engage in carefree adventure.

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Lark

Lark

  1. A surname transferred from the nickname, from lark as a byname or for a catcher and seller of larks.
  2. A surname originating as a patronymic shortened from Larkin, a medieval diminutive of Laurence.
  3. A male given name transferred from the surname, of occasional usage.
  4. A female given name from English from the lark bird.
    • Mama had chosen the name Lark. Lark Browning Erhardt. Papa had wanted to call me Beverly Mary; Mary after the Blessed Virgin. Mama said she wouldn't hang a name like Beverly Mary on a pet skunk. Where she got the idea for Lark, I don't know, though one time when I asked, she said that larks flew...1989, Faith Sullivan, The Cape Ann, Penguin, published 1989, →ISBN, page 2
  5. A river in England, on the border between Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Lark

Lark

  1. (alternative) Alternative form of Larak (“island off the coast of Iran”).

lark meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

lark in Hindi

लार्क, लर्क

lark in Tamil

லார்க்

lark in Marathi

bird
चंडोल caṇḍol

lark in Urdu

لارک
More languagesFewer languages
lark in Bengali
লার্ক, লার্ক করতে
lark in Telugu
లార్క్, లార్క్ చెయ్యడానికి
lark in Malayalam
ലാർക്ക്, ലർക്ക്, ലാർക്ക് ചെയ്യാൻ
lark in Kannada
ಲಾರ್ಕ್
lark in Punjabi
ਲਾਰਕ, ਲਾਰਕ ਕਰਨ ਲਈ
lark in Gujarati
લાર્ક, લર્ક
lark in Odia
ଲାର୍କ, ଲାର୍କ୍, ଲାର୍କ୍ କରିବା ପାଇଁ
lark in Nepali
लार्क, लर्क, लर्क गर्न
lark in Arabic
قُبَّرَة qubbara
lark in Persian
چکاوک čakâvak
lark in Vietnamese
chim chiền chiện

Examples of lark in a sentence

  • Thanks partly to Tom Wolfe’s raised-eyebrow account, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” that bohemian lark has been retrospectively hailed as the flash point of the emerging hippie counterculture.2011 August 4, Stephen Holden, “Stoned Archive: Wild Ride Of the Merry Pranksters”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
  • What began as a lark has grown into something very, very big, inflating the company’s ambitions.2018 November, Alexis C. Madrigal, “The Dangers of YouTube for Young Children”, in The Atlantic:
  • Whew! [Brightening suddenly] What a lark!1912 (date written), [George] Bernard Shaw, “Pygmalion”, in Androcles and the Lion, Overruled, Pygmalion, London: Constable and Company...

All 26 example sentences with lark

Synonyms of lark

Antonyms

Forms of lark

Noun
plurallarks
alternative formlaverock
alternative formlavrock
Verb
third-person singular presentlarks
present participlelarking
past participlelarked
pastlarked

Plural of lark: larks

Origin of lark

From Middle English larke, laverke, from Old English lāwerce, lǣwerce, lāuricæ, from Proto-West Germanic *laiwaʀikā, from Proto-Germanic *laiwazikǭ (compare dialectal West Frisian larts, Dutch leeuwerik, German Lerche), from *laiwaz (borrowed into Finnish leivo, Estonian lõo), of unknown ultimate origin with no definitive cognates outside of Germanic.

Uncertain, either * from a northern English dialectal term lake /laik (“to play”) (around 1300, from Old Norse leika (“to play (as opposed to work)”)), with an intrusive -r- as is common in southern British dialects; or * a shortening of skylark (1809), sailors' slang, "play roughly in the rigging of a ship", because the common European larks were proverbial for high-flying; Dutch has a similar idea in speelvogel (“playbird, a person of markedly playful nature”).

Words formed from lark

Phrases with lark

Words that rhyme with lark

28 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about lark

What does lark mean?
Lark means any of various small, singing passerine birds of the family Alaudidae.
What is lark in Hindi?
Lark in Hindi is लार्क, लर्क. See Lark meaning in Hindi.
How do you use lark in a sentence?
Thanks partly to Tom Wolfe’s raised-eyebrow account, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” that bohemian lark has been retrospectively hailed as the flash point of the emerging hippie counterculture.
What part of speech is lark?
Lark can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce lark?
Lark is pronounced /lɑːk/ (UK).
What is the plural of lark?
The plural of lark is larks.

Words near lark in the dictionary

  1. Lariviere
  2. Larivieres
  3. larixin
  4. larixinic
  5. larixinic acid
  6. lark
  7. lark about
  8. lark around
  9. lark bunting
  10. lark buntings
  11. lark buttonquail

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lark (page history and authors); Lark (page history and authors); lark (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); lark (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); lark (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); lark (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); lark (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); lark (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); lark (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); lark (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); lark (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); lark (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); lark (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-lakh.wav, En-us-lark.ogg.

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