Skylarking, a Joyful Messing Around

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey there, this is Gary. I’m calling in from Nantucket Island, Massachusetts.

Welcome, Gary. What’s on your mind?

I’m calling in because there’s a word I heard a while back while I was traveling on the Caribbean coast to Costa Rica down in Puerto Viejo.

I met a woman from Australia and she used this word called skylarking and I had never heard it before.

And it was such a fun word. It kind of became one of the words we used when I was hanging out with this group of friends.

And she described it as kind of like when you’re fooling around,

You’re like not really doing what you should or just kind of horsing around,

And I wanted to know more about the word and what you all thought of it

And where it might have came from.

Oh, that’s lovely. Skylarking, horsing around.

So what are we talking about here?

Like jumping off of rocks into pools of water?

Sure, yeah.

Yeah, it’s an old word. It goes back hundreds of years.

The verb to skylark goes back hundreds of years in English, and it’s got some twists and turns in its story.

The one I want to talk about first is the naval connection with skylarking in particular,

Referring to racing through the rigging of a sailing ship,

Either as a form of practicing skills for young deckhands or just as a way of passing time if you’re bored.

So they would literally just kind of go hand to hand, foot to foot through the rigging in a particular way.

And this was known as sky larking.

But the lark part of it, of course, refers to the bird because larks in general are often associated with happiness and good times.

Not only because of their exuberant singing, but their zippy up and down flying.

It’s a happy, merry, bright, fresh kind of sound,

And you will find those adjectives used in expressions.

Happy, merry, bright, fresh, or cheerful as a lark, or as a young lark.

So we have these proverbs or idioms comparing people to larks.

And we also talk about rising with the larks, meaning getting up early.

And do you know what the opposite of a night owl is?

I guess maybe a robin.

It’s a lark.

It’s a morning lark.

So skylarking contains within this notion of somebody who’s got energy and exuberance

And is out there to get what’s to be gotten, you know?

Yeah.

So that’s really what’s happening with skylarking.

It’s just really about grabbing life’s goodness and taking hold of it and going for it.

And so it sounds like that’s what you were doing in Costa Rica.

Yeah, yeah, that’s a really cool history.

I didn’t know that.

I imagine you come across a lot of interesting words when you travel.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, and it’s ironic.

I live on Nantucket where there’s a big history of ships and whaling

And people from around the world coming here on ships.

And, yeah, I’ve always been really into your show and words and their meanings

And how they’ve changed over time.

I appreciate your insight on that word.

We appreciate your calling.

Yeah, call us again sometime, Gary.

Take care of yourself.

All right.

Will do.

Take care.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.