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 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

Rodolphus did not answer, but began to turn summersets and cut capers on the grass, making all sorts of antic gestures and funny grimaces toward his mother.

From Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. 22, March, 1852, Volume 4. by

Of course, I had to admit that Lord Alfred Douglas, before he began to cut capers in the hinterland of Fleet Street, had been a poet.

From Books and Persons Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 by Bennett, Arnold

Related Words

• cavort
• frolic
• gambol
• prance