playsome

English

Etymology

From play +‎ -some.

Adjective

playsome (comparative more playsome, superlative most playsome)

1. (dated, chiefly literary) Playful; frolicsome.
   • c. 1690, John Aubrey, "On Thomas Hobbes" in Characters from the Histories & Memoirs of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1918)[1]:

     I have heard his brother Edm and M'r Wayte his schoole fellow &c, say that when he was a Boy he was playsome enough: but withall he had even then a contemplative Melancholinesse.

   • 1855, James Avis Bartley, “Elfindale”, in Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems‎^[2]:

     Sweet Frankie lives in Elfindale;
     Where all the flowers are fair, and frail
     (Like her fair self,) a slender fairy,
     And like a zephyr, playsome, airy,
     But lovelier far, than buxom Mary.

   • c. 1880, William Barnes, The girt woak tree that's in the dell‎^[3]:

     An' down below's the cloty brook
     Where I did vish with line an' hook,
     An' beat, in playsome dips and zwims,
     The foamy stream, wi' white-skinned lim's.

Synonyms

• carefree, merry, sportive, wanton

Derived terms

• playsomely
• playsomeness

Anagrams

• maypoles