frolic

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 22, 2025 is:

frolic • \FRAH-lik\  • verb

To frolic is to play and move about happily.

// We watched the seals as they frolicked in the harbor.

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Examples:

“Harper’s consciousness ends up in the body of her mom, Anna. Lily bodyswaps with her soon-to-be grandma Tess. And vice versa. Meaning Lohan and Curtis are playing teens again. While their younger co-stars mug sternly, make jokes about regaining a metabolism ‘the speed of light,’ and frolic on electric scooters, Freaky Friday’s dynamic duo fling themselves into silly sequences ...” — Kristy Puchko, Mashable, 5 Aug. 2025

Did you know?

Frolic is a word rooted in pleasure. Its most common function today is as a verb meaning “to play and move about happily,” as in “children frolicking in the waves,” but it joined the language in the 16th century as an adjective carrying the meaning of its Dutch source vroolijk: “full of fun; merry.” Shakespeare’s Puck used it this way in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, saying “And we fairies … following darkness like a dream, now are frolic.” Verb use quickly followed, and by the early 17th century the word was also being used as a noun, as in “an evening of fun and frolic.”