lark

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A jolly or peppy person.

   Charles Randolph Grean is married to pop lark and multi-hit artist Betty Johnson.

2. 2
   verb

   To catch larks (type of bird).

   to go larking

3. 3
   noun

   A frolic or romp, some fun.

   ‘Ha! ha!’ laughed Master Bates, ‘what a lark that would be, wouldn’t it, Fagin? I say, how the Artful would bother ’em wouldn’t he?’

4. 4
   noun

   A prank.

   doolittle. […] [T]hanks to your silly joking, he leaves me a share in his Pre-digested Cheese Trust worth three thousand a year on condition that I lecture for his Wannafeller Moral Reform World League as often as they ask me up to six times a year. / higgins. The devil he does! Whew! [Brightening suddenly] What a lark!

5. 5
   verb

   To sport, engage in harmless pranking.

   [T]hey laugh at us old boys,” thought old Pendennis. And he was not far wrong; the times and manners which he admired were pretty nearly gone—the gay young men “larked” him irreverently […]

6. 6
   name

   A female given name from English from the lark bird.

   Mama had chosen the name Lark. Lark Browning Erhardt. Papa had wanted to call me Beverly Mary; Mary after the Blessed Virgin. Mama said she wouldn't hang a name like Beverly Mary on a pet skunk. Where she got the idea for Lark, I don't know, though one time when I asked, she said that larks flew high and had a happy song.

7. 7
   noun

   any carefree episode

8. 8
   noun

   any of numerous predominantly Old World birds noted for their singing

Etymology

Uncertain, either * from a northern English dialectal term lake /laik (“to play”) (around 1300, from Old Norse leika (“to play (as opposed to work)”)), with an intrusive -r- as is common in southern British dialects; or * a shortening of skylark (1809), sailors' slang, "play roughly in the rigging of a ship", because the common European larks were proverbial for high-flying; Dutch has a similar idea in speelvogel (“playbird, a person of markedly playful nature”).