" cavorting "

[Verb]  | "ca*vort" | \ kə-ˈvȯrt \

1: to leap or dance about in a lively manner

2: to engage in extravagant behavior

Origin: 1794 ;

 Earlier also cauvaut, cavault, covault, of obscure origin;

  * Note : All early attestations of the word are North American, the first known (as cauvauted) in a letter written by the North Carolina politician John Steele in April, 1794. Various etymologies have been suggested: that the word is altered from {curvet:1|curvet:1}; that it is comprised of the unstressed expressive prefix ca- (as in {caboodle|caboodle}) and {vault:3|vault:3}; that it has some relation with French chahuter "to dance the chahut (a boisterous, somewhat indecent dance), to make an uproar" (see: Leo Spitzer, "Cavort," Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. 48 (1949), pp. 132-37). Apparently the same word is cavaulting "coition" in John Camden Hotten's A Dictionary of Modern, Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words (London, 1859). In the second edition of Hotten's dictionary (London, 1860) the word has the etymological note "Lingua Franca,cavolta," though there appears to be no evidence for such a word in Lingua Franca.;

[Noun]  | "cavorting" 

[Verb]  | "cavorting" 

[Verb]  | "cavort"