gambol
Americanverb (used without object)
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gambols,
present (3rd person singular)
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gamboled,
past participle, past
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gambolled,
past participle, past (especially British)
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gamboling,
present participle
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gambolling
present participle (especially British)
noun
verb
noun
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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gambolsimple
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gambolssimple
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have gamboledperfect
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have gambolledperfect
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has gamboledperfect
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has gambolledperfect
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am gambolingprogressive
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am gambollingprogressive
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are gambolingprogressive
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are gambollingprogressive
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is gambolingprogressive
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is gambollingprogressive
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have been gambolingperfect progressive
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have been gambollingperfect progressive
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has been gambolingperfect progressive
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has been gambollingperfect progressive
Past
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gamboledsimple
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gambolledsimple
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had gamboledperfect
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had gambolledperfect
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was gambolingprogressive
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was gambollingprogressive
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were gambolingprogressive
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were gambollingprogressive
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had been gambolingperfect progressive
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had been gambollingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of gambol
1495–1505; earlier gambold, gambald, gamba(u)de, from Middle French gambade, variant of gambado 2 ( def. )
Explanation
To gambol is to run around playing excitedly. Although the word sounds like "gamble," when you gambol you never lose — you just have a great time! If you've ever sprinted around, jumping up and down, yelling "woo-hoo!," you already know how to gambol. Being really excited or even just slap-happy makes people gambol, and it's so energizing that animals do it too. Dogs gambol when they rise on two legs to greet each other, and squirrels gambol when they chase each other up and down trees. And when springtime comes after a long winter, it seems to make every living thing gambol with extra life.
Vocabulary lists containing gambol
Animal Farm
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Hot to Trot: Animal Ambulation
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A Midsummer Night's Dream
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
"They are dying so that you can gambol in your redwood cabinets," he said while addressing the government.
From BBC ● May 5, 2023
Concerns about health, safety and inclusion are driving new trends in the annual gambol of ghouls and goblins.
From Washington Times ● Oct. 19, 2022
Painted pigs gambol in green fields by meandering streams under blue, cloud-studded skies happily oblivious of the fate that awaited them within.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 11, 2022
In “Homecomings,” Heaney describes returning home, where he watches a sand martin gambol along a riverbank.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 27, 2022
Here and there a colt would break away and gambol out into the field, only to be recalled by a sharp whinny from its mother.
From The Pony Rider Boys in the Alkali or, Finding a Key to the Desert Maze by Frank Gee Patchin
“Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs?”
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 14, 2022
What’s left is a shimmering sensibility that gambols freely in a new age.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 12, 2019
As the astronauts finished their scientific work — and their gambols — they planted an American flag on the moon.
From Washington Post ● May 26, 2018
Mr. Schulian’s anthology gambols over a lot of ground.
From New York Times ● Aug. 28, 2014
Where be your gibes now, your gambols, your songs? jimmy snyder.
From "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer
Like nature sprites, the dancers gamboled over “nature carpets,” rugs crafted of foam by the Turinese artist Piero Gilardi.
From New York Times ● Jun. 30, 2022
Three dogs gamboled about as Kristof, whose curly hair is graying, spoke during the interview in a shed.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 27, 2022
They squawked and gamboled for the Chicken Shack dance cam.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 18, 2021
She gamboled along to the music on Cannon Green behind the iconic Nassau Hall and screeched with glee.
From Scientific American ● Jun. 14, 2021
It was a time when rabbits gamboled, when mockingbirds sang by moonlight and all the world turned young.
From Silver and Gold A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp by Dane Coolidge
Just before the hour the new man took possession on the left and gambolled across halfway, swaying mesmerically inside two challenges before exploding into a drive which crashed in off the bar.
From The Guardian ● Nov. 9, 2017
"My family seem incredibly relaxed with me," he purred, as two cubs gambolled nearby.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 12, 2013
But having been thrown a bone by his manager, Torres gambolled exuberantly after it, impressing with his work rate and movement in and around the box.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 15, 2011
Kittens In Manhattan, two kittens gambolled around a gas jet, turned it on.
From Time Magazine Archive
In the ecstasy of that thought they gambolled round and round, they hurled themselves into the air in great leaps of excitement.
From "Animal Farm: A Fairy Story" by George Orwell
The dire wolves known to paleontologists, however, are different from the creatures that can now be viewed in Colossal videos gamboling in an open field.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 24, 2025
McDonald is game for the high jinks but doesn’t always seem natural gamboling about the stage.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 31, 2025
She smiled approvingly at the gamboling dogs, the sweating men, the woman who had arrived for a constitutional in high heels and full makeup.
From New York Times ● Apr. 29, 2022
Reports spread across the Internet of long-haired mountain goats gamboling through a town in Wales, jackals crowding a park in Tel Aviv and pumas venturing into residential neighborhoods in Santiago, Chile.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 29, 2021
It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gamboling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters.
From "1984" by George Orwell
Thiago Alcantara, while back gambolling on the training ground grass, will not.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 22, 2021
And, if you dig the ship, check out the mother—the queen of the meanies, who rolls up late in the show, gambolling across salt flats toward a school bus full of innocent children.
From The New Yorker ● Jun. 27, 2016
BST07:55 9 min: Spurs attack on the break, with Harry Kane gambolling down the right flank.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 8, 2015
"Don't you think, George, that a few sheep, with lambs gambolling about, would make the fields look furnished?" one duchess suggested to her butler, who obediently provided the requisite livestock the following morning.
From The Guardian ● Mar. 25, 2013
I leaned back in the embrasure in a more comfortable position, so that I could enjoy more fully the aërial gambolling.
From "Dracula" by Bram Stoker
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
