curveting

• curvetting

curveting

1. present participle and gerund of curvet

curveting (plural curvetings)

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

     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.

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

     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.