lark

• laverock, lavrock

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: läk, IPA^(key): /lɑːk/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• (General American) enPR: lärk, IPA^(key): /lɑɹk/

• Audio (GA)

  (file)

• Homophones: lakh (RP), lock (non-rhotic with father-bother merger)
• Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)k

From Middle English larke, laverke, from Old English lāwerce, lǣwerce, lāuricæ, from Proto-West Germanic *laiwarikā, from Proto-Germanic *laiwarikǭ, *laiwazikǭ (compare dialectal West Frisian larts, Dutch leeuwerik, German Lerche), from *laiwaz (borrowed into Finnish leivo, Estonian lõo), of unknown ultimate origin with no definitive cognates outside of Germanic.

lark (plural larks)

1. Any of various small, singing passerine birds of the family Alaudidae.
2. Any of various similar-appearing birds, but usually ground-living, such as the meadowlark and titlark.
3. (by extension) One who wakes early; one who is up with the larks.

   Synonyms: early bird, early riser

   Antonym: owl

4. A jolly or peppy person.
   • 1990, Wayne Jancik, The Billboard Book of One-Hit Wonders, →ISBN, page 238:

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

• (species in Alaudidae): woodlark, skylark, magpie-lark, horned lark, sea lark, crested lark, shorelark

lark (third-person singular simple present larks, present participle larking, simple past and past participle larked)

1. To catch larks (type of bird).

   to go larking

• lark on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Category:Alaudidae on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons
• Alaudidae on Wikispecies.Wikispecies

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”).

lark (plural larks)

1. A romp, frolic, some fun.
   • 1838, Boz [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], chapter 43, in Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy’s Progress. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I, II, or III), London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC:

     ‘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?’

   • 1878, Henry James, An International Episode‎:

     “Oh, dear, no,” said the young Englishman; “my cousin was coming over on some business, so I just came across, at an hour’s notice, for the lark.”

   • 2011 August 4, Stephen Holden, “Stoned Archive: Wild Ride Of the Merry Pranksters”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     Thanks partly to Tom Wolfe’s raised-eyebrow account, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” that bohemian lark has been retrospectively hailed as the flash point of the emerging hippie counterculture.

   • 2018 November, Alexis C. Madrigal, “The Dangers of YouTube for Young Children”, in The Atlantic‎:

     What began as a lark has grown into something very, very big, inflating the company’s ambitions.

2. A prank.
   • 1912, George Bernard Shaw, “Act V”, in Pygmalion‎:

     DOOLITTLE. […] thanks 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 […] .
     HIGGINS. The devil he does! Whew! [Brightening suddenly] What a lark!

• whim, especially in phrase on a whim, see also Thesaurus:whim

• skylark (in verb sense "play")

lark (third-person singular simple present larks, present participle larking, simple past and past participle larked)

1. To sport, engage in harmless pranking.
   • 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 68, in The History of Pendennis. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC:

     [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 […]

   • 1855, Elizabeth Gaskell, chapter 35, in North and South‎:

     […] the porter at the rail-road had seen a scuffle; or when he found it was likely to bring him in as a witness, then it might not have been a scuffle, only a little larking […]

2. To frolic, engage in carefree adventure.

• lark about
• lark around

• Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “lark”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
• Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Massachusetts, G.&C. Merriam Co., 1967

• Karl, Klar, Kral, klar