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Rollicking   /rˈɑlɪkɪŋ/   Listen
Rollicking

adjective
1.
Given to merry frolicking.  Synonyms: coltish, frolicky, frolicsome, sportive.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Rollicking" Quotes from Famous Books



... derby in the back so it rested on his nose, stuck his chin up to meet it, and started off in the most unmistakable semblance of a tipsy man to be met anywhere. "See me behavin'?" he remarked sidewise, with a gleam of rollicking ...
— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... and gaiety, in which he equals Scott and far surpasses any other modern. The intensity of the man, his electric activity, his spasmodic nervous power, quite dazzle and stun us. But this restless gaiety too often grows fatiguing, as the rollicking fun begins to pall upon us, as the jokes ring hollow, and the wit gets stale by incessant reiteration. We know how much in real life we get to hate the joker who does not know when to stop, who repeats his jests, and forces the laugh when it does not flow freely. Something of the ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison

... them were fairly presentable; and they were all Christian martyrs compared to Rowley; but they were in a frolicsome and rollicking humour that promised danger as we approached the town. They sang songs, they ran races, they fenced with their walking- sticks and umbrellas; and, in spite of this violent exercise, the fun grew only the more extravagant with the miles they traversed. Their drunkenness was deep-seated ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson

... was not the most serious thing in prospect for the rebel Shirley Duncan. Not even the good times prepared for the candidates served to allay the dread she struggled against, and only her natural delight in the rollicking fun, and the really fine spread served them by the juniors, helped bring the girl back to ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft

... affirmative. "Nice, comfortable, elevating palliness with you; and a right down rollicking bust-up occasionally with the ladies of the unpretending school ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... "I propose that we play the most innocent and rollicking of games—blindman's buff." [Footnote: Campan, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... the jovial words and rollicking tune made his own fate seem the harsher, but there was no softening in those venomous blue eyes. Copley Banks had brushed away the priming of the gun, and had sprinkled fresh powder over the touch-hole. Then he had taken up ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... nigh sundown an' I reckon they hope to shoot something fer supper," saying which he began to sing in a rollicking voice the following, which may be presumed to be of his ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane

... son of the handsome, brown-bearded man whom he called papa. Tall, slender, and yellow haired, he was as bonnie a laddie as ever filled a mother's heart with pride; a healthy, happy boy, affectionate and generous, and full of a rollicking fun which made him at once the delight and terror of his sister, who never knew in what direction his next outbreak would come. In spite of his merciless teasing, the brother and sister were close friends and constantly together. Girls were scarce in ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray

... a grim sort of fellow, black from his trade, with big rollicking eyes. At times he was not easy to please, but if he took a liking, he was for joking at once. He approved of Parpon, and never lost a chance of sharpening his humour on the dwarf's impish whetstone ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... fatiguing days on reconnaissance duty waist-deep in mud and water, Company E, of the —th Regiment of Infantry, like a lot of rollicking school-boys on a holiday, were indulging in numerous sports outside their huts in the street. The spirit of the soldiers was contagious—even the native venders seemed to feel the reaction. Their voices, usually ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves

... solemn and awe-inspiring. Even Eric felt a little subdued; the chamber seemed so vast, and the great four-poster, away by itself in an alcove, had a remote and unapproachable aspect. It was one thing to have a rollicking, merry, good-humored father to romp about with all day, and another to approach the solemn personage who reposed in the ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... century, observed that the truest actor is one who does not feel his part at all, but produces his effects by intellectual effort and intelligent observation. Behind the figure on the stage, torn with passion or rollicking with mirth, there must always be the cool and unemotional mind which directs and governs and controls. This same theory was both held and practised by the late Benoit Constant Coquelin. To some extent it was the theory of Garrick and Fechter and Edwin Booth; though it was rejected by ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... butchery—all brought about by this man in front of me who was now coolly listening to the word of God! However, the service was over, and the Volunteers filed out of the church and marched to the strains of their drum and fife band, which played rollicking tunes to the delight of the rollicking Yorkshiremen. When we got in front of the Bank of England, Captain Allan Brown (commanding the Keighley detachment) halted and dismissed us until seven in ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End

... recollect the rollicking young attendant who drove Father O'Shane in the snowdrifts from Vermont, a specimen of whose oratory we have given in a preceding chapter. The antagonist of Parson Grinoble was no other than the same young man. He had rambled up to this neighborhood in search ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... congratulated on a distinctly ingenious idea. Searching about her, no doubt, for a successor to the famous Pimpernel, her attention was caught by a certain picture in the WALLACE Collection, a picture everyone knows and admires for its rollicking and adventurous high spirits. "Capital!" said she (as I imagine it); "why not trace back the line of Blakeney, and make the subject of this picture the ancestor from whom he inherited his endearing qualities?" The Laughing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various

... accomplished its task, was proceeding at a rapid rate up Broadway. Careening this way and that, it jolted swiftly over the pavement. The driver, either hardened by habit, or, it may be, a little tipsy, exhibited a rollicking, reckless air, as he urged his horse along. As he came opposite Hiram, their eyes met. Influenced by I know not what, perhaps for a joke, perhaps to give the young fellow who was so verdantly staring at him a start, he half checked the animal, as if about to pull ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... way it pleases thee. The little world and then the great we see. O with what gain, as well as pleasure, Wilt thou the rollicking cursus measure! ...
— Faust • Goethe

... night came voices and laughter, and the sound of wheels and galloping horses. It was not the soft, rollicking laughter of black men, but the keener, more metallic sound of white men's cries, and Bles Alwyn paused at the edge of the wood, looked back and hesitated, but decided after a moment to ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... my time with more or less pleasure to very rollicking songs about the sea, the flashing brine, the spray and the tempest's roar, the wet sheet and the flowing sea, a life on the ocean wave, and all the rest of it. To paraphrase a land proverb, let me write the songs of the sea, and I care not who goes to sea ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... proves the good right he has to his name. Trill and quavers and roulades are shaken from his bow as lightly as foam from the prow of a ship. The music leaps rollicking up and down, here and there, till the air is all a-quiver with merriment. The old man draws himself up to his full height, all save that loving bend of the head over the beloved instrument. His long slender foot, in its quaint "Congress" shoe, beats time like a mill-clapper,—tap, ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards

... like father," she said, with a long-drawn breath. Then she looked up suddenly at the sun shining through a rift in those reckless gray clouds, and put out one hand as if to get it full of the headlong rollicking breeze. "But the earth is not dying," she cried. "It is well and strong, and it likes to go round and round among all the other worlds. It likes the sun and moon; they are all good friends; and it likes the people who live on it. Maybe it is they instead of the ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie

... characters. His genial humor which has brightened life for so many thousands of readers; his tender pathos which brings tears to the eyes of those who seldom weep over imaginary or even real grief or pain; his rollicking gayety which makes one enjoy good food and good drink in his tales almost as much as if one really shared in those feasts he was so fond of describing; his keen sympathy with the poor and the suffering; his flaming anger against injustice ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch

... it would be better not to waste his time on such side-issues. The way he could really be of service was in the store itself, tactfully lubricating that complicated engine of goods and personalities. But he learned to utter, when called upon, a few suave generalities, barbed with a rollicking story. This made him always welcome. He was of a studious disposition, and liked to examine this queer territory of life with an unprejudiced eye. After all, his inward secret purpose had nothing to do with the success or failure of retail trade. He was still seeking a horizon that would ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley

... ladies of the station, who perforce converted military events into those friendly gatherings which are the mainstay of Anglo-Indian life. Native onlookers, of all races and ranks, formed a mosaic border to the central theme; and a jumble of rollicking Irish airs from the Sikh band set Honor's foot tapping the ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... something of Kipling's rollicking music, with less noise and more refinement. Out of the mechanical grinding of the hand organ, with the accompaniment of city omnibuses, we get the very breath of spring in almost intolerable sweetness. This poem affects ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... "No," says the Baron, in bed, "Give me my Pickwick, and, after him, for a soothing and pleasant companion, give me WASHINGTON IRVING. When I'm in another sort of humour, bring me THACKERAY. For rollicking Irish life, give me LEVER. But as to youth-about-town life of the present day, I do not know of any second-class humorist who approaches within measurable distance of the author of The Pottleton Legacy, in the past." So far the Baron. And now "The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various

... of the south. And the gentle Scuddy (who was finding all things happy, which is the only way to make them so) was startled by a sharp jerk of his dear friend's head. Following the clue of gaze, there he saw, coming up the river with a rollicking self-trust, a craft uncommonly like that craft which had mounted every sort of rig and flag, and carried every kind of crew, in his many dreams about her. This made him run back to his room at once, not only in fear of being seen upon the bank, but also that he might command ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... Hoodoo," "Jay Bird," "The Man in the Moon's Ball," "Mrs. Craigin's Daughter," "O'Grady's Goat," "The Party at Odd Fellows' Hall," "The Phantom Band," "Romeo and Juliette," "Schneider's Band," and "The Versatile Baby." The book is full of the rollicking college spirit, and college men and their sweethearts will find it an unfailing source of delight. It is adapted either for glee club or home use, and ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various

... Overhead, the latest rollicking French polka was being rattled out, with a savage irony of which pianos, even by the best makers, can at ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... he was good-looking and pleasant-mannered, and had a sort of rollicking, light-hearted way with him, which was very attractive; but still it seemed little short of infatuation on the part of Edith Robins to take up with a man whose character was so well known, and who was in every way her ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker

... achievement. They gave little serious thought to the cost, or the history their record was to make. But in the test that followed they stood, as the soldiers of the nation had stood before them, courageous, unflinching to the last. Little notion had those rollicking young fellows of what lay before them—a winter campaign in a strange country infested by a fierce and cunning foe who observed no ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter

... of 1643 he took a sudden journey into the country, and returned home to his boys with a wife, the daughter of an Oxfordshire Cavalier. Poor Mary Powell was but seventeen, her poetic lord was thirty- five. From the country-house of a rollicking squire to Aldersgate Street was somewhat too violent a change. She had left ten brothers and sisters behind her, the eldest twenty-one, the youngest four. As one looks upon this picture and on that, there is no need to wonder that the poor girl was unhappy. The poet, though keenly alive ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... waterfalls, of which they had never even heard the names. Not only were they enchanted with her, but they were thoroughly delighted with her father, Olaf Gueldmar. The sturdy old pagan was in the best of humors,—and seemed determined to be pleased with everything,—he told good stories,—and laughed that rollicking, jovial laugh of his with such unforced heartiness that it was impossible to be dull in his company,—and not one of Errington's companions gave a thought to the reports concerning him and his daughter, which had been so gratuitously related by ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... the appearance of this feeble old man, one would hardly think that he was once a rollicking scrapper, with ready fists like rawhide mallets. Old Dave dutifully gives full credit to the law ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... Well-fed, rollicking priest is Father O'Toole of Dublin, with a big, round face, a double chin, and a brogue that you can cut with ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... a tall, handsome fellow, so full of life and spirits that "his happy disposition," to quote Lady Mary, "made him forget every evil when he was before a venison-pastry, or over a flask of champagne." This rollicking, careless joyousness is the tone of his books. Whether taken to a prison, an inn, or a lady's boudoir, whether watching the breaking of heads, the blackening of eyes, or the making of love, the reader is always ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... sang a rollicking German students' song. He was followed by Lady Olivia, who sang Gounod's "Ave Maria," accompanied by her husband on the piano, and the professor on the organ. Then Mildmay produced his violin. And so the time slipped rapidly on until the clock ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... tossed her head. Forthwith she crossed the room to her piano and plumped herself down hard on to the stool. Then, from under her fingers there fell a rollicking melody that seemed to fill the room with little dancing feet. Faster and faster sped Billy's fingers; swifter and swifter twinkled the little dancing feet. Then a door was jerked open, ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter

... gigantic mining construction of that opulent lode whose treasures were actually glutting the mineral markets of the world. The streets overhead seethed and swarmed with miners, mine owners, and adventurers—riotous, rollicking children of fortune, always ready to drink and make merry, as eager in their pursuit of pleasure as of gold. Comstockers would always laugh at a joke; the rougher the better. The town of Virginia itself was just a huge joke to most ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... reached it. There was more than a touch of the austere about the music. A glance at the programme was enough to show the lover of airs of the trashy, clashy order that this was no place for him. Most of the items were serious. When it was thought necessary to introduce a lighter touch, some staidly rollicking number was inserted, some song that was saved—in spite of a catchy tune—by a halo of antiquity. Anything modern was taboo, unless it were the work of Gotsuchakoff, Thingummyowsky, or some other eminent foreigner. Foreign origin made it ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse

... the President's rollicking welcome to the seceded States, and over his veto proceeded to pass various laws regarding their admission, such as the Civil Rights ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... building, and at the other end is another platform for the choir. A young Irishman of the name of Sloan preaches a sensible sort of discourse, to which a Presbyterian could hardly have objected. Last night this same Mr. Sloan enacted a character in a rollicking Irish farce at the theatre! And he played it well, I was told; not so well, of course, as the great Dan Bryant could; but I fancy he was more at home in the Mormon pulpit than Daniel ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne

... coughing in the face. Irregular or too frequent feedings. Sleeping on the mother's breast while nursing. Spitting on handkerchief to remove dirt from baby's face. Allowing a person with a cough or a cold to hold the baby. Violent rocking, bouncing, and rollicking play at any time. Dirty playthings, dirty nipples, dirty bottles, dirty floors. Allowing any person with tuberculosis to take care of the baby. Testing the temperature of the baby's milk by taking the ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... eyes full; he had a strong face, and was of a cheerful, social disposition, rather than retiring and taciturn. Irish characteristics predominated in him, and when not on duty he was disposed to be rollicking and free and easy. He was not hard to approach by his inferiors, but he was not always discriminating in the language he used to them. He did not seem to be a deliberate thinker or reasoner, and often gave the impression that his decisions or opinions ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... a freshness nothing short of alluring. They would make a sportsman of a monk. The characters of Walter, Bob, the Bishop, the Judge and his Guide are drawn in a fashion that attracts both sympathy and emulation, while the rollicking but delicate humor has rarely ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... after the two go to the city to see a wonderful picture of Gerome's just arrived. They stop at Mrs. Latimer's, who promises to accompany them if they will stay to lunch, and they spend the intervening time in the nursery. A rollicking baby is Polly's delight, a baby who can be pinched and squeezed and kissed and bitten ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... Roars of laughter greet the rollicking humour of the clowns and their rude burlesque of things theatrical. But longest and loudest is the applause over the new touches—those portions that have been written in to please the court and the Queen. To remodel a play written ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan

... "Well," said the rollicking mariner, laughing at the joke that had been played upon him, "we sailors express ourselves that way, but ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman

... over a bleak country, coldly lit by the rays of the moon, which was almost at the full. Into the half light stole presently the sound of some lively instrument: a reel tune played, as it were, beneath one's breath, but with all the revel and rollicking emphasis of that intoxicating primitive music. And then in correspondingly low relief, but with no less emphasis, the occupants of this singular ball-room began to dance. One might have fancied them some midnight company ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... my life I shouted 'Long live the king!' with less enthusiasm than the cry deserves, it was then: to assume a rollicking air, to laugh with cool carelessness when there is nothing between you and death but the more or less strong pressure of a highwayman's finger on the trigger of a musket, is no easy task; but all this I accomplished, and once more got through the village with a whole skin indeed, but ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... prompted by the abiding conviction that Plautus as a dramatic artist has been from time immemorial misunderstood. In his progress through the ages he has been like a merry clown rollicking amongst people with a hearty invitation to laughter, and has been rewarded by commendation for his services to morality and condemnation for his buffoonery. The majority of Plautine critics have evinced too serious an attitude of mind in dealing with a comic poet. However portentous ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke

... a healthy, rollicking lad, with power plus, and a deal of destructiveness in his nature. But destructiveness in a youngster is only energy not yet properly directed, just as dirt is useful ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... glittering with dewy freshness. Sweet odours from the aromatic bush filled the air, and every living creature made what noise it could, to show its joy in being happy and free in the beautiful Bush. Rich and gurgling came the note of the magpies, the jovial Kookooburras saluted the sun with rollicking laughter, the crickets chirruped, frogs croaked in chorus, or solemnly "popped" in deep vibrating tones, like the ring of a woodman's axe. Every now and then came the shriek of the plover, or the ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley

... after leaving the old army, he was a good deal in England, connected with the small-arms factory at Enfield, and other enterprises of the same sort. Nearly all the credit of the efficiency of the Charleston fortifications is due to him. And notwithstanding his Northern birth and occasional rollicking ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle

... watched the show go on? The great ones were in their element: at Esterhaz or elsewhere their world and mode of life were the same—but the poor artists?... The single cafe was a poor compensation for a rollicking life of change. The exile from Paris—the avocat, or notaire, or docteur in the provinces—how he hankers after the electrically lit boulevards, and wonders whether he dare run up for a day or ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman

... England: an all but imperceptible shortening or loss of corners at the mouth, upon mention of marriages of his clergy: particularly once, at his reading of a lengthy report in a newspaper of a Wedding Ceremony involving his favourite Bishop for bridegroom: a report to make one glow like Hymen rollicking the Torch after draining the bumper to the flying slipper. He remembered the look, and how it seemed to intensify on the slumbering features, at a statement, that his Bishop was a widower, entering into nuptials in his fifty-fourth year. Why not? But we ask it of Heaven and Man, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Eleusis had overflowed with witticisms, was exhausted and silent. She still held in her hand the jar from which she had given the bereaved goddess a reviving draught, but it was empty and she longed for a drink. She was indeed a he: for it was a youth in woman's dress who played the rollicking part of Iambe, and it was Alexander's friend and comrade Diodoros who had represented the daughter of Pan and Echo, who, the legend said, had acted as slave in the house of Metaneira, the Eleusinian queen, when Demeter took refuge there. His sturdy legs had good reason ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... a good rollicking song, preferably of a patriotic turn, but is very unreliable as to the sources ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood

... singing a rollicking song of the range at one end of the bar, and a chorus of four bellowed a profane parody ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand

... sounded once more and pair of heavy steps came up the stairs, and tramped towards them; and some indefinable recognition of the heavy tread came vaguely to Chrysler. The steps stopped, the note was withdrawn, the tread sank away down the stairs, and De Bleury, rollicking with suppressed ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair

... suggestive pictures, however, cannot be passed by. This dear little fellow is the son of Mr. B. J. Farjeon. Mr. Farjeon married "Rip Van Winkle" Jefferson's daughter, and the youngster is pictured dressed in the tattered garments of merry, rollicking Rip. You know how Rip always drinks your health? He holds the glass of hollands high up and cries, "Here's your health and your family's good health, and may they all live long and prosper!" but Mr. Farjeon's little boy cries out, "Here's your health, and your family's good health, and ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... by east," replied one of the men at the wheel, Larry O'Neil by name—a genuine son of Erin, whose jovial smile of rollicking good humour was modified, but by no means quenched, by the serious circumstances in which he found himself placed. His comrade, William Jones, who stood on the larboard side of the wheel, was a short, thick-set, stern seaman, ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... slave abounded in tropes and glowing tongue pictures of apochalyptic visions all his own; and, indeed, the poetic quality of his mind is seen in all his natural efforts when the self-consciousness of education does not stand guard. The staid religious muse of Phillis Wheatley and the rollicking, somewhat jibing, verse of Dunbar show it equally, ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.

... assuming that you have not seen a production of 'A Gay Coquette,' I will make a brief but necessary explanation. It is a musical-farce-comedy— burlesque-comedietta. As the title implies, Miss Carroll's role is that of a gay, rollicking, mischievous, heartless coquette. She sustains that character throughout the entire comedy part of the production. And I have designed the extravaganza features so that she may preserve and present the same ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... of the two children was a sort of compromise between the complexions of their parents—chubby-faced, chestnut-coloured, curly-headed, rollicking little pests, who would never be quiet, and whose little black buttons of eyes were always peering into something, and whose little plugs of fingers would, in spite of every precaution to prevent, be diving into ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... curly maids, Who deftly ply your pails and spades, All you who sturdily take your stand On your pebble-buttressed forts of sand, And thence defy With a fearless eye And a burst of rollicking high-pitched laughter The stealthy trickling waves that lap you And the crested breakers that tumble after To souse and batter you, sting and sap you— All you roll-about rackety little folk, Down-again, up-again, not-a-bit brittle folk, Attend, attend, And let ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann

... are her friends—so each talker pretends— from CHAPLIN the cheery, to WINCHILSEA wise, And valorous MUNTZ, who the land-question shunts, and "goes the whole hog" for Protection and rise; With rollicking LOWTHER, who's no Malagrowther, but larkily hints that the look-out is mournful; And NETHERSOLE, rustic and most nubibustic, of law and of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 17, 1892 • Various

... any wonder that when Dick Steele, aetat twenty-six, an officer of Fusiliers, and a merry vagabond, wanted to redeem his reputation by writing a rollicking comedy, his thoughts turned to the satirising of the British undertaker? For the young man must prove to the town that he was not the hypocrite several of his kind friends had dubbed him. The fact was, that he had been virtuous enough to write a pious ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... breezy, rollicking old saga it is! Can't you almost catch the spray and sea-swell ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... would weaken you, as Hindenburg said of poetry; but if all these little rules are tyrannously enforced on those who may think them silly, what is to become of the pirate? Where, if people like Beattie and Sims had always had their way, would be those rollicking tales of the jolly Spanish Main, and men walking the plank into the big blue sea, and long, low, rakish craft putting in to Indian harbours with a cargo of men and women all hung from the yard-arm? A melancholy has come over the spirit of Big-Admiral von Tirpitz ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany

... I always cherished dreams of one day being a doctor. But our farm was small, and our family large, and when father died we older boys had to turn out to earn our living. I got a job that first summer working in a sawmill near home, and there I met my fortune. There was a big, warm-hearted, rollicking chap there, who was foreman, and I thought he was the most wonderful man alive; and upon my word, I rather think so yet. He was just the sort of fellow to be a tremendous hero in the eyes of a youngster of fifteen. ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith

... the road, and, vaulting over the wall, crossed the open field, singing a gay, rollicking ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks

... at the time young Lincoln resided at New Salem, Illinois, in and around the village, a band of rollicking fellows, or more properly, roystering rowdies, known as the "Clary's Grove Boys." The special tie that united them was physical courage and prowess. These fellows, although they embraced in their number many men who have since become respectable and influential, ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger

... Toepffer. He possesses, with the funny conception of Leech and Doyle, a freer pictorial conception than either, and holds a pencil that is more at command than Gavarni's. In his single outlines, often of the rudest kind, there is the very rollicking of freedom, the exact hitting of traits and character. He dashes down his creation with the quickness of thought, and with as much confidence that Messrs. Oldbuck, Crepin, and Jabot will leap into the very existence he wishes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... uncomfortable as when dressed differently from his compeers at any kind of social gathering. Mrs. T—— asks you to dinner, and you go clad in the correct costume in deference to the prandial meal, but find all the rest in morning dress. Mrs. G——, on the contrary, sends you a rollicking note to feed with a few friends—no party; and you go straight from office to find a dozen heavily-got-up people sniggering at your frock coat and black tie. However, as I said, on this occasion the lecturer, Dr. Zerffi, was in the thick of what proved to be a very attractive lecture; so I ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... "Abu'l-Hasan of Khorasan" (he means, I suppose, Abu Hasan al-Ziyadi and the Khorasani Man, iv. 285), whilst he suggests, "a careful abridgment of the tale of Omar the Son of No'man" (ii. 7,, etc.). Let me add that wittiest and most rollicking of Rabelaisian skits, "All the Persian and the Kurd Sharper" (iv. 149), struck-out in the very wantonness of "respectability;" and the classical series, an Arabian "Pilpay," entitled "King Jali'ad of Hind and his Wazir Shimas" ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... the mad, rollicking humor, sticking at nothing, either in thought or in expression, with which especially this last book of Rabelais's work is written. But we have no more ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... soundings were not finished till nearly eight a.m. (March 23rd), when the old corvette swung round on her heel; and, with the black hills of Salbah to port, resumed her rolling, rollicking way southwards. Her only ballast consisted of some six hundred conical shot, or twelve tons for a ship of eight hundred. After one hour of steaming ( seven miles) we passed the green mouth of the Wady Antar, in whose Istabl ("stable"), or upper ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... of Saint George stood out in bold relief, dipped in parting salute to our vessel, which reciprocated the compliment as the man-of-war bore away on her course to the northward, a group of officers rollicking round their captain on her deck aft and gazing at us as she moved off rapidly under a full pressure of steam, evidently admiring our skipper's wonderful ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... "Oh, do help me, Rollicking Robin!" sobbed Lesa. "I have lost my comb, my golden comb. What shall I do? My mother will fret, my father will scold, my little sister will cry, and some harm will surely come to me if I ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie

... don't think much of it is true either. We allow sailors to spin yarns and only believe as much as we like." Jeff was much better satisfied to feel that a hero was not an impossible being, and that these rough and ready, hard swearing, rollicking men were not in reality the stuff out of which was moulded true heroism, endurance, and nobility. He took comfort now in laughing at their "make believe" tales of miracles ...
— A Little Hero • Mrs. H. Musgrave

... beat the hedges until they light on a wren's nest, and, having started the wren and slaughtered it, they suspend the tiny mite to the middle of a long pole, which is borne by two lads from shoulder to shoulder. They then sing a rollicking native ditty, of which ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine

... in the little store wended their uneasy way along, a spark of humour was often injected into them by the delightful banter of a rollicking, good-natured Irishman, a big two-fisted fellow, generous- hearted and lovable, whom we affectionately called "Big Phil." I can see him now, standing like a great pyramid in the midst of the little group, every now and then throwing his head back in good-natured ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... accounts of the best way which the leaders of the state found for the occupation of their time, and for the edification of their people. The private theatricals of this court, however, will be long remembered, because the rollicking experiences of these parties, which were a sort of picnics in a courtly style, give the framework, or machinery for the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... on and the pace grew faster. There were fun and fighting galore, and Jimmy was in his element again. Occasional qualms there were, no doubt, when he had a moment to remember how Kitty would feel about it all. But this was his day of joy—mad, rollicking, bacchanalian joy—and all the pent-up, unhallowed hilarity of the bygone months found vent in deeds more wild than ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... knows they are) far too much merely plutocratic playgrounds. One would have thought that an Anglican Bishop might be allowed to know something about the English University system, and even to have, if anything, some bias in its favour. But (as I pointed out) the rollicking Radicalism of Bishops has to be restrained. The man who writes the notes in the weekly paper called the Outlook feels that it is his business to restrain it. The passage has such simple sublimity ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton

... discussion with the cook, for instance, the sound of music burst upon her ears; the echo of that disused piano which had almost forgotten to be anything but a stand for ornaments and lamps. Bang went the bass, crash went the treble, the tune a well-known dance, played with a dash and a spirt, a rollicking marking of time irresistible to any human creature under forty, who did not suffer from corns on their toes. In the recesses of the scullery a subdued scuffling was heard. Tweeny was stepping it to and fro, saucepans in hand; from the dining-room ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... of year when the birds set up housekeeping; and such debonair wooers the male birds are! Dressed in their gay attire, they display it to the best advantage before the fair sex. Is there anything so interesting or so amusing as bird courtship? The rollicking song of the male, an exhibition of his vocal powers worthy of a virtuoso, is accompanied by the most comical gymnastics—bowing, scraping, and side-stepping like a dancing-master; all of which, I am sure, is highly ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson

... pony, the "dealer" on his black, raw-boned half-bred, the publican on his stolid old mare, farmers, drovers, after-riders, on cropped and uncropped mounts more accustomed to the slow drudgery of labour than to the rollicking, hard-going hunt; and after them the crowd on foot—village children, farm labourers, and apprentices from forge and counter. Riding side by side, and earnestly conversing, were the "vet," whose horse at the last hunt bolted and left him clinging to a bough, and the shopkeeper, whose grave ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... the richest treasures of his friendship were bestowed upon the fair and gentle Lily. A wild, rollicking, careless piece of ebony, a pure negro, was his other friend. He was a stable boy, and one of the crew who pulled the four-oar race boat, when Master Archy chose to indulge in an excursion upon the water. His master, who in ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic

... his ebullitions of wit were lost, but he was always beloved for his good humor, which no amount of carnage could suppress. He was not averse to church-going, though he was liable even in church to be carried away by the rollicking spirit that was in him. Instance his visit to the little temple which he had helped to ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore

... that house with an aching heart, the young magazine-writer went back to his lodgings, and plunged into the dashing essay or the smart pleasant story which was to constitute his monthly contribution to the Cheapside or the Charing Cross. Gaiety, movement, rollicking, Harry Lorrequer-like spirits were demanded for the Cheapside; a graceful union of brilliancy and depth was required for the Charing Cross. And, O, be sure the critics lay in wait to catch the young scribbler tripping! An anachronism ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... discover that the dentist was made of a stuff very different from that softer clay which composed the rollicking good-tempered farmer. Mr. Sheldon watched her tears with the cold-blooded deliberation of a scientific experimentalist. He was glad to find that he could make her cry. She was a necessary instrument in the working out of certain plans that he had made for himself, and he was anxious ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... painted hands pointing to half past three A. M. with the slogan "Early to bed and early to rise make a crew healthy, wealthy and wise." "Glorify Work" paddled its own canoe, scorning to be towed by "Give Service," and "Be Happy" came along singing such rollicking songs and shouting so with laughter that they set the ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey

... really in this pantomimic history of Don Juan, with its huge nonchalance and audacious cynicism, is the invasion of the literary field by the godless rabble, the rabble who take no stock of the preserves of art, and go picnicking and rollicking and scattering their beer-bottles and their orange-peel in the very glades of the immortals. It is in fact the invasion of Parnassus by a horde of most unmitigated proletarians. But these sweet scamps are led by a real lord, a lord who, like most lords, is ready to out-philistine ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... haggard faces that told of the long hard fight with the world in which they were of the multitude of the vanquished; old women, too, jaded and tired, and ready to slip into oblivion, their long day's duty done; mothers with babes in their arms and young children nestling close at their sides; rollicking boys and girls as well, with all the struggle of life ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... other Roman Catholic countries; indeed, it seemed to be distinguished only by an increase of revelry, the activity of the billiard saloons, the noisy persistency of the lottery-ticket venders, the boisterousness of masquerade processions, and a general public rollicking. The city is not large enough to support a bull-ring, but cock-pits are to be found all over the island, and the Sabbath is the chosen day for their exhibitions. It must be a very small and very poor country town in Cuba which has not its cock-pit. ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... on "over bank, bush, and scaur," like so many fair Ellens and young Lochinvars - clambering up very precipices, and creeping down break-neck hills - laughing and talking, and singing, and whistling, and even (so far as Mr. Bouncer was concerned) blowing cows' horns! What vagabond, rollicking rides were those! What a healthy contrast to the necessarily formal, groom-attended canter on ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... something to think of that's pleasant," put in Frank cheerily. "It's a scary thing for a fellow, first time he goes among strangers. I'm bracing up myself to meet the rollicking, mischief-making crowd at Bellwood, who will just be lying in wait to guy us and haze us. We'll stand together, Bob, hey? and give them good as they send," and Frank slapped the lad on the ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster

... is a strange experience,—peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe. It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first bursts upon one, all in a day, as it were. I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghkanic to the sea. ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... in her low chair and hid her face in her hands. At that instant the chorus of Mokroe began singing in the room on the left—a rollicking dance song. ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... professor sang a rollicking German students' song. He was followed by Lady Olivia, who sang Gounod's "Ave Maria," accompanied by her husband on the piano, and the professor on the organ. Then Mildmay produced his violin. And so ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... birds and other creatures (as well as men-things) finding each other and living and working together; about a tiger that had mourned for many seasons alone, after some sportsman had killed his female; about another rollicking young tiger pair that leaped an eight foot wall into a native yard in early evening, made their kill together of a plump young cow, and passed it up and over the ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... still; then broke into along "ah!" Twenty thousand sprang up together as Scolus the Thasian leaped. His partisans cheered, while he rose from a sand-cloud; but ceased quickly. His leap had been poor. A herald with a pick marked a line where he had landed. The pipers began a rollicking catch to which the athletes involuntarily kept time with ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... pleased. The wind of their passion shifts quickly from point to point, one moment blowing a hurricane, the next sinking to a happy-go-lucky summer breeze. I have seen a little thing convert a crew on the point of mutiny into a set of rollicking, good-natured souls who—until the wind veered again—would not hurt a fly. So with these. They spread themselves into a circle, squatting or kneeling or standing upon the white sand in the bright sunshine, ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... had deepened the contrast between the two brothers; and Frank smiled with affectionate pride as he looked up in Amyas's face, and saw that he was no longer merely the rollicking handy sailor-lad, but the self-confident and stately warrior, showing in every look ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... taking the child up in his arms and putting on his hat. "You follow me; we'll have some sport. Tally ho! tally ho!" And away we went, Hal heading our procession through the streets, shouting a rollicking song, the baby ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... and Federal cannons were talking to each other. Sometimes a ball passing over would seem to be mad, then again some would seem to be laughing, some would be mild, some sad, some gay, some sorrowful, some rollicking and jolly; and then again some would scream like the ghosts of the dead. In fact, they gave forth every kind of sound that you could imagine. It reminded one of when two storms meet in mid-ocean—the mountain billows of waters coming from two directions, lash against the ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... Concert Hall. A gay assembly, a good dinner, the national airs of all countries played by a fine band, furnished abundant enjoyment and aroused enthusiasm to the utmost. The climax came when a band of young men and women, dressed in the quaint and picturesque costumes of the Dutch peasantry, to rollicking music executed several peasant dances on the platform and ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... cliff-swallows scattered all through these canyons, wheeling and darting, ever on the wing. These, with the noisy crested jays, an occasional "camp-robber," the little nuthatches, the cheerful canyon wren with his rollicking song, the happy water-ousel, "kill-deer," and road-runners and the water birds,—ducks, geese, and mud-hens, with an occasional crane,—made up the bird life seen in the open country and in these upper canyons. Earlier in the season it must be a bird's paradise, ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... jolly, rollicking bird, winked, and added: "No, he isn't much of a doctor, it's true, but he's got one medicine that nearly always works. ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh

... seemed to laugh in very defiance of winter when the sun was so warm. The unrestrained joy and vivacity of the day emphasised the gloom that rilled the first of the two funeral carriages. Mavis stared with dull surprise at the rollicking gaiety of the afternoon: its callousness to her anguish irked her. It made her think how unnecessary and altogether bootless was the loss she had sustained. She tried to realise that God had singled her out for suffering as a mark of His favour. But at the bottom of her heart she ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... the room were of tiered logs, the bark still on, and the chinking between the logs, plainly visible, was arctic moss. Through the open door that led to the dance-room came the rollicking strains of a Virginia reel, played by a piano and a fiddle. The drawing of Chinese lottery had just taken place, and the luckiest player, having cashed at the scales, was drinking up his winnings with half a dozen cronies. The faro- and roulette-tables ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... Wolseley's words, some civilian occupations are very useful; for, if they were not, we might all have a fine time playing at soldiers—real soldiers, with guns!—from a tumultuous cradle to a bloody grave. If only we could abolish the civilian and his ignoble toil, what a rollicking life we should all enjoy upon ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... His imagination, in casting off its first impression, was inclined to exaggerate Alice's beauty and to dwell upon its picturesqueness. He smiled as he walked back to the fort, and even found himself whistling gayly a snatch from a rollicking fiddle-tune that he had heard ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... maids in Quaker gray, gay princes in scarlet cloaks, coquettes with roses in their hair, monks in cowls that might have covered the tall Minster Tower, demure little girls hugging paper dolls, and rollicking school-boys with ruddy morning faces, an absent-minded professor carrying his shoes under his arms and looking wise, followed by cronies, fairies, goblins, and all the troops just loosed from Noah's storm-tossed ark. They walked, they strutted, they ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... possession of her at the thought of meeting some rough peasant, or some rollicking student, to whom she could make no intelligible ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... resist the rollicking music back of the paying booth. Three sable musicians form the orchestra, and from a bass viol, fiddle and fife they extract melody that, with all its short-coming, would make a deacon wish to dance. Any one, white or black, can purchase ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... faces. Laughter and merry chatter filled the air, and the rollicking songs written by "Steve" and others were more in evidence than ever. The daily routine of work seemed lighter. There was no grumbling, no fault finding; even the interminable task of shifting coal was carried on with actual cheerfulness. Grimy hands and blackened ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday

... murder. To turn her into a fine lady, the wife of Dmitri Andreich Olenin, like a Cossack woman here who is married to one of our officers, would be still worse. Now could I turn Cossack like Lukashka, and steal horses, get drunk on chikhir, sing rollicking songs, kill people, and when drunk climb in at her window for the night without a thought of who and what I am, it would be different: then we might understand one another and I ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy

... stream of melody. From the solemn and stately harmonies of the Largo, he passed to those old familiar airs, that never die and never lose their power over the human heart—"Annie Laurie" and "Ben Bolt," and thence to a rollicking French chanson, which rather bowled over his accompanist, but only for the first time though, for she had the rare gift of improvisation, and ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... Seeing two small ones on the opposite shore, near a few recently erected huts of two half-castes from Tette, we halted for the ferry-men to come over. From their movements it was evident that they were in a state of rollicking drunkenness. Having a waterproof cloak, which could be inflated into a tiny boat, we sent Mantlanyane across in it. Three half- intoxicated slaves then brought us the shaky canoes, which we lashed together and manned with our own canoe-men. Five men were all that ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... this well-considered opinion with becoming solemnity, he threw back his head and laughed a rollicking laugh, as though he had made the very best ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp

... block from the shopping center, a row of spacers on planet-leave came rollicking cheerily toward her.... Trigger shifted toward the edge of the sidewalk to let them pass. As the line swayed up on her left, there was a shadowy settling of an aircar at the curb ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz

... passionate waltzes, and their promenades on the balcony in the moonlight's mild glow, when sweet lips recited choice selections from Moore, and white hands swayed dainty sandal-wood fans with the potency of the most despotic sceptres; the sleigh-rides, with their wild rollicking fun, keeping time to the merry music of the bells and culminating in the inevitable upset; the closing exercises of the seminary, when blooming girls, in the full efflorescence of hot-house culture, make a brief but ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... rhythms, the principal ones are the March, which is indicated either in "Alla Breve" (C), as "The Stars and Stripes Forever," or in 2-4, as the more rollicking "Over There," or the well known Cake Walk, "Georgia Camp Meeting." By increasing the tempo of the 2-4 March it becomes the One ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... arrow of memory had been sharpened on Time's grindstone and it seemed to pierce through us, so Martin proposed that we should try the rollicking chorus which the excursionists had sung on the pleasure-steamer ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine



Words linked to "Rollicking" :   playful



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