gambol
Americanverb (used without object)
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:
Specifically, the eye-popping assemblages that greeted Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, in last week’s getting-to-you know gambol through battleground states.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 14, 2024
"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
Together, they gambol like the stags in the poem.
From New York Times ● Jul. 3, 2022
They belong to France; their game is the gambol of the exuberance of French genius.
From The International Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, August, 1851 by Various
“Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs?”
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 14, 2022
And occasionally the actors play the text too loud, so to speak, but it’s forgivable, especially given the language’s perverse gambols — who wouldn’t be carried away by these lines?
From New York Times ● Dec. 30, 2020
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
Though others roared at Bear’s antics, this young man took offense at Bear’s gambols and, with growing anger, made three attempts to snatch his mazer back.
From "Crispin: The Cross of Lead" by Avi
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
The more they kept to their village, the bolder grew the wild things that gamboled and bellowed on the grazing-grounds by the Waingunga.
From The Second Jungle Book by Kipling, Rudyard
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
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
The difference is we can see the actors mugging and gamboling.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 10, 2023
The donkey also wonderingly observes horses gamboling in a field, glimpsed through the narrow window of a transport van, and tropical fish in a tank in a store window.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 12, 2022
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
The walls bore the same ornamental plates, each featuring a highly colored, beribboned kitten, gamboling and frisking with sickening cuteness.
From "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by J.K. Rowling
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
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
The gambolling creatures we habitually count to get to sleep are recast as necrotic nightmares, a World War Z-style rolling wave of bad baa juju.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 9, 2016
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.
