lark

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A small brown bird known for its tuneful singing, often heard high in the sky.

   A lark rose singing into the morning sky.

2. 2
   noun

   Something done for fun or as a joke.

   We climbed the hill in the rain just for a lark.

3. 3
   verb

   To play or behave in a silly, light-hearted way.

   The children were larking about in the garden.

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”).

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