cavort

cavort \kuh-VORT\, intransitive verb:

1. To bound or prance about.
2. To have lively or boisterous fun; to behave in a high-spirited, festive manner.

. . .Enkidu, who was seduced by gradual steps to embrace the refinements of civilization, only to regret on his deathbed what he had left behind: a free life cavorting with gazelles.
-- Yi-Fu Tuan, Escapism

But why struggle with a term paper on the elements of foreshadowing in Bleak House when I could be cavorting on the beach.
-- Dani Shapiro, Slow Motion

By 1900, Leo-Chico would have been thirteen years old, and just past his bar mitzvah, or old enough to know better than to cavort with street idlers and gamblers.
-- Simon Louvish, Monkey Business

The men spent the next few weeks there drinking beer, eating hibachi-grilled fish, and cavorting with the young ladies.
-- Robert Whiting, Tokyo Underworld

Cavort is perhaps an alteration of curvet, "a light leap by a horse" (with the back arched or curved), from Italian corvetta, "a little curve," from Middle French courbette, from courber, "to curve," from Latin curvare, "to bend, to curve," from curvus, "curved, bent."