cut capers

Idioms  

1. Also, cut a caper. Frolic or romp, as in The children cut capers in the pile of raked leaves. The noun caper comes from the Latin for “goat,” and the allusion is to act in the manner of a young goat clumsily frolicking about. The expression was first recorded in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (1:3): “Faith, I can cut a caper.”

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Example Sentences

Some bartenders in Yokohama and Kobe dress up on Christmas night like Santa Claus, serve drinks, cut capers.

From Time Magazine Archive

On this broad platform the infant publication immediately began to cut capers.

From Time Magazine Archive

And the peasant began to cut capers, as though to amuse his Generals, because they had been kind to him, an idle sluggard, and had not scorned his peasant toil.

From A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections by Hapgood, Isabel Florence

And thenceforward the nimble gentleman danced upon bell-ropes, vaulted from steeple to steeple, and cut capers out of one dignity to another.

From Andrew Marvell by Morley, John

But Fido ran in, who loved little Frank, And the shoes were remembered no more; They began to cut capers, but at the first prank Down tumbled poor Frank on the floor.

From Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People by Follen, Eliza Lee Cabot

Related Words

• cavort
• frolic
• gambol
• prance