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

It seemed he was about to cut capers with Mr. Wogan on his shoulders.

From Parson Kelly by Lang, Andrew

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

It maitters little what he putts on, hooiver, for he wad joke an’ cut capers, baith pheesical an’ intellectual, I verily believe, if he was gaun to be hanged!

From The Garret and the Garden by Ballantyne, R. M. (Robert Michael)

Related Words

• cavort
• frolic
• gambol
• prance