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:
Her puppies gambol around her, looking healthy and excited, but everyone else seems momentarily stunned by this story.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 30, 2023
"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
The simmered lamb used to gambol in the Hudson Valley, the croquetted topneck clams were raked in off Long Island and so on.
From New York Times ● Mar. 19, 2019
In each of us there is a hinterland where thoughts as fantastic as anything that happens in dreams gambol around with the irresponsibility of monkeys.
From The Heart's Country by Mary Heaton Vorse
“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
Shirley MacLaine, doing her best Gwen Verdon impression, gambols onscreen like a giddy doo-dah, and then she does the same thing in reverse.
From The New Yorker ● Aug. 20, 2018
Your gambols, your songs — your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?
From New York Times ● Feb. 1, 2016
Where be your gibes now, your gambols, your songs? jimmy snyder.
From "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer
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
Here, in the salad years, the movie greats gamboled … Laurel and Hardy, W.C.
From Golf Digest ● Mar. 30, 2020
Fate has gamboled with us—it has mocked us with a child's game.
From Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XX by Alexander Leighton
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
In the laboratory broadcasters moved, talked, sang, and in regimented waves their actions and sounds gambolled over the radio to the sight & hearing of the home audiences.
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
McDonald is game for the high jinks but doesn’t always seem natural gamboling about the stage.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 31, 2025
For California’s governor, who loves gamboling on a national stage, the whole evening was a lark.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 1, 2023
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
Up ahead I noticed a deer gamboling in the grass.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 8, 2020
The Co-ordinator’s ruddy glass reflected, in miniature, the discreet gamboling of the flame, and, in even further miniature, it was reflected in each of his brooding pupils.
From "I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov
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
That’s a big ask, as you’ll know if you’ve ever defrosted a lamb chop and hoped to see it gambolling round the garden.
From The Guardian ● May 25, 2016
"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
And in the end you have to love a choreographer whose concluding image of world peace is a stage covered with soaked and battered national flags, with two live lambs, bleating and gambolling over them.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 19, 2012
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.
