contortioning

Updated: June 16, 2025

Here there was no mere posturing and contortioning among the girls as with the gipsies; they sprang like flames and stamped the floor with joyous detonations of their slippers. It was their convention to catch the hat from the head of some young spectator and wear it in a figure and then toss it back to him.

William Dean Howells - Familiar Spanish Travels