Definify.com

Webster 1828 Edition


Sportfulness

SPORTFULNESS

,
Noun.
Play; merriment; frolick; a playful disposition; playfulness; as the sportfulness of kids and lambs.

Definition 2024


sportfulness

sportfulness

English

Noun

sportfulness (uncountable)

  1. playfulness
    • 1894, Rev. John Gerardus Fagg, Forty Years in South China:
      In long winter nights it was hard to tell who enjoyed sportfulness the better, the children who romped the floor, or the parents who, with lighted countenance, looked at them.
    • 1917, Arthur Symons, Figures of Several Centuries:
      'Sometimes,' he writes, in a characteristic letter, 'when I find myself transported with jollity and love of company, I hang lead to my heels, and reduce to my thoughts my fortunes, my years, the duties of a man, of a friend, of a husband, of a father, and all the incumbencies of a family; when sadness dejects me, either I countermine it with another sadness, or I kindle squibs about me again, and fly into sportfulness and company.'