curveting

alternative curvetting

1. gerundparticiplepresentpresent participle and gerund of curvet

plural curvetings · alternative curvetting

1. The motion of a horse or other animal that curvets.

   the curvetings of a horse

2. Caper, frisking, often with a nuance of flirtation. (of a person)

   And when they were back again going through the figure, they made a real pantomime of it, with coquettish smiles and curvettings on her part, roguish glances and bold advances on his.

   1940, Sigrid Undset, chapter 9, in Arthur G. Chater, transl., Madame Dorthea, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, page 239

   1 more example

   One humiliation had succeeded another—the false smiles of the market sellers, the curvetings and oglings of the barmaids with whom his father flirted, the compliments and encouraging words of his father's friends.

   1916, James Joyce, chapter 2, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man